Panos photographer Carolyn Drake has been named as one of the ten recipients of the annual Magnum Emergency Fund Grant. The Emergency Fund “enables independent documentary photographers to investigate and document under-reported social justice stories by providing seed support, mentoring, and technical assistance.”

Carolyn submitted a proposal entitled Invisible Bus which looks at a local bus route in Birmingham, Alabama, locally known as the “Maids’ Bus”. It collects a group of senior African American woman from around Birmingham and drops them off at unmarked spots along residential roads in the affluent municipality of Mountain Brook where many of them have been working as maids for decades.

With this project, Carolyn wanted to look at the racial divide that still persists in America’s Deep South. She will be travelling on the bus with Ashley Cleek, a radio journalist in Alabama.

The Magnum Emergency Fund is made possible with the help of the Open Society Foundation’s Documentary Photography Project and the Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation.