Graduate student Russ Bray named 2026 Bob Baxter Scholarship recipient
By Sara Mearns
COLUMBIA, Mo. (May 27, 2025) — Graduate student Russ Bray has received the $2,500 Bob Baxter Scholarship through the National Press Photographer Foundation, which will help fund the logistical costs of his ongoing master’s project at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Established in 1979, the scholarship is named after lifetime photographer and World War II veteran Bob Baxter, who continued to pursue the watchdog role of journalism even after a swimming accident in 1971 left the photojournalist a paraplegic. The award is available to any undergraduate or graduate student pursuing higher education studies in still photojournalism.
“$2,500 is really huge to be able to kind of fill in some gaps I have,” Bray said. “I normally only work with one or two lenses that I own, and so being able to have a couple more of those really extends my work.”
Bray began building his portfolio at Missouri State University, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography in 2023. While his focus as an undergraduate was in fine art photography, Bray soon found that he had an interest in pursuing photojournalism professionally.
Ultimately, Bray chose the J-School as the institution to follow this passion for the stipends and funding offered to graduate students, the accredited reputation of the journalism program, and the versatility of the coursework.
“The School pushes you in a really good way, especially in classes where I can do a picture story about someone I’m familiar with or a community I already know, and in the next I’m forced to do an essay to try to do something a little more introspective on myself.”
Russ Bray
“The School pushes you in a really good way, especially [in] classes where I can do a picture story about someone I’m familiar with or a community I already know, and in the next I’m forced to do an essay to try to do something a little more introspective on myself,” Bray said.
Throughout his time as a J-School graduate student, Bray has worked within a variety of the Missouri News Network outlets, such as the NPR-member station KBIA-FM, culture periodical VOX Magazine and community newspaper the Columbia Missourian.
Similarly, Bray has spent the past few years volunteering with the photography contests and workshops offered to students at the J-School. Specifically, Bray worked as the webmaster for the College Photographer of the Year (CPOY) competition, the coordinator and webmaster for the Pictures of the Year (POY) competition, and a photographer at the 2025 Missouri Photo Workshop in Union, Missouri.
Through these opportunities, Bray had the chance to speak and connect with various professionals within the industry of photojournalism, experiences that supplemented his educational experience at the J-School.
“You get to just talk to these kinds of people regularly,” Bray said. “You get the portfolio reviews, but then you’re also just kind of forced to spend a week with them in these rooms, and it’s super helpful.”
Along with these volunteer and academic endeavors, Bray has also formulated the topic of his current master’s project; photographing a family or individual living in a Columbia trailer park to acknowledge the issues of marginalized communities and class disparity within the United States.
Bray, having grown up in a trailer park with a single mother, attributes this first-person perspective into these under-communicated communities as preparation for highlighting what it means to not just live in America, but to survive.
“I hadn’t lived there since I moved to college, so then coming back three years later, staying nights there, [and] just being with her, it’s almost a nostalgia of something that I don’t miss, in a weird way,” Bray said.
Using the funds received from the Bob Baxter Scholarship, Bray plans to create a physical product of his completed project that is easily distributable, with the end goal of issuing a copy to the families within the trailer park community. As well, Bray hopes to allocate a portion of the $2,500 fund to enhancing his photography gear and equipment.
Following the completion of his master’s project and his graduation from the J-School, Bray is looking into potential fellowships, staffer jobs, or freelance work within urban communities, using his education from the J-School to officially enter into the interdisciplinary world of photojournalism.
Updated: May 27, 2026