Photo this morning by @obxhomepage Frank Brown as morning breaks with a full rainbow . We are heading south to check the waves. Good surf day. I’m just going along for the ride. Follow me on Instagram Stories.
7 thoughts on “IG Stories”
Comments are closed.
Now that (I think) the EPF finalist essays are done, I thought it only fair to revisit my pre-award criticism and suggestion that burn consider having some of the regulars serve as judges for future EPFs.
But first let me say, I have no overall negative criticism of the results. There is so much diversity and so few standards in documentary photography these days that any group of five judges would come up with a mostly unique list of finalists and winners, though I’m sure there would be at least some small amount of crossover. Laura El Tantawy, for example, would probably make a lot of finals.
No, it’s more that, with the proliferation of contests that flood my inboxes and various social media feeds, I’ve become interested in the general phenomena of these contests. On top of that, burn’s EPF is the first one I was ever aware of, and the only one I’ve ever followed (or entered). So I’ve given it some thought over the years.
To wit:
“My criticism of the EPF is that it always seems to tend towards the prestigiously mainstream. Prestigious mainstream judges choose prestigious mainstream-ish projects that are also chosen by prestigious mainstream judges in other prestigious mainstream publications or competitions. It’s all terribly prestigiously mainstream.”
Well, other than the winner, and maybe the one about Ukraine, the results were hardly prestigiously mainstream this year. I was happy to see that.
It appears to me that there was a relative abundance of stark black and white work that seems to want to communicate some form of alienation, and other naval gazing type stories in which the photographer strings together a series of photos that have personal meaning, and at their best, convey a mood we might not otherwise feel. For me, “The North,” worked really well in that vein.
My personal tastes tend toward stories that engage the wider world in an innovative, artistic way that illustrate deeper meaning, or questions, beyond the superficial realities of more mainstream documentary or photojournalism. In this go-round, I really appreciated the aforementioned Laura El Tantawy’s work about the farmer suicides and Loulou d’Aki’s “Make a Wish.”
Of course reasonable people can disagree. The short of it is that I think the judges did a fine job.
That said, back to what I wrote awhile back:
“I think burn would do well to pick non-mainstream judges, particularly people who have shown great appreciation for burn itself.”
Yea, although the judges did, and always do, a fine job, I still believe that letting burn people have a go at it would produce winners that are equally worthy as what pretty much any set of five photo world heavyweights would choose, and that the results would be more true to the magazine’s spirit.
I’d nominate Bill Hess for his humanity, Imants for his artistic eye, Erica McDonald because Erica McDonald, Jeff Hladan for his knowledge and thoughtfulness, and John Gladdy because he hates everything.
You would probably pick a different five. That’s fine. There are, of course, many more who are equally worthy. If I tried to name you all, I would no doubt inadvertently leave someone off, so I won’t try. Please don’t take offense.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I think the whole concept of these contests is silly – pitting artists against each other like in a cock fight. And beyond silly, many of the contests are transparent business enterprises, a pay-to-maybe-get-published crapshoot whose only purpose is to separate photographers from their money and pad the pockets of the contest sponsor.
But conceptual problems aside, as far as I can tell, the EPF is the best of them. It’s a good cause that promotes innovative work. Publishers and photographers have to be creative outside the actual act of publishing or photographing to stay afloat these days. Bravo to those like burn who do it ethically and well.
In a better world, however, instead of paying $25 entry fees to fund a contest, we’d all be paying $25 subscriptions to pay photographers week in and week out. Hard to believe that better world was the norm, not so long ago.
To me the while contest was exactly that a contest. There was too much
If I win I will…….
The ability to communicate with an audience visually took a back seat it all was too much “I”
Dominika Gesicka was the only exception.
Emerging Photographers just don’t do enough what is needed are photographers with grit
With Instagram becoming a commercial selling site another avenue of storytelling disappears. Maybe burn should set up its own “instagram” type of site invite 30 odd photographers like mw, gladdy,erica, laura etc and build from there.
The burn diary format is just too short and restrictive.
ps I doubt if I would participate as I just make books and show reorganized linear snippets on line
MW why not start a computing of your own?
Competition not computing obviously
hharry, I’m taking that as a rhetorical question, as I kind of answered it already.
But speaking of old-fashioned photo photo competition, i.e. getting a big spread in a top publication and presumably being paid for it: This link provides a good example (burn doesn’t highlight linked text, so you have to hover the cursor over this).
The pics are outstanding individually. The captions give insight into the meaning of the photos without pedantically explaining what they are about. Both the captions, and the photos themselves are instructive as well as meaningful, providing important tips for producing great photography. Taken as a whole, the sequence tells a story that much deeper than its individual parts.
It’s not perfect, of course (I’d lose the first soccer ball pic), but when we critique photo essays, especially our own, that’s the type of work we can use for context.