Image © Max Pinckers

FIRST PRIZE, PORTRAIT INDIVIDUAL CATEGORY

MAX PINCKERS, Belgium

TRANSITIONS #06 - Girl with Golden Curls

In 2007 I began photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent. I’m now finishing my bachelor end of year work - a documentary on transgenderism in Thailand - and hope to do my Master degree next year.

The idea for this series came to me when I was driving my bike to school down a familiar route in Ghent. I noticed the fascinating expressions on the faces of other cyclists driving past me. I wanted to photograph this, but without disturbing their state of mind with my presence. I decided to set up my camera on a tripod, behind a tree, and attach a flash to the branches above the cycle path. This allowed me to photograph people unposed and absorbed in their thoughts.

I’ve always held a strong fascination for both the definition and interpretation of portraits. Classically speaking, portraits comprise a large degree of cooperation between photographer and subject, ideally (though not necessarily) revealing some connection between the two. Both are involved in a balanced and unbiased relationship to create a desired outcome.

Many photographers and painters have explored the limits and possibilities of the two dimensional portrait, all contributing to what it has become today. The question still remains; are we able to capture a person’s character, thoughts or emotions in a single image? With the series Transitions, I explore this idea by making an attempt to 'catch' people as they are dissociated from the encompassing world, deeply entranced in their own thoughts and absorbed in whatever is going through their mind.

The people in these images are cycling on a long and straight daily commuter route. Typically, when we cycle we’re disconnected from the world around us: we dream and ponder whilst mechanically driving along a familiar, somewhat mundane path. Submerged into an 'absorptive mode', people's expressions depict themselves in an honest way – unposed, unconcerned and unaware of either the photographer or the camera. The relation between the photographer and the subject has therefore been obscured, something which provokes us to ask ourselves if these really are portraits.

Transitions was my end of year work for my second year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent.

~

Image © Chris Zedano

SECOND PRIZE, PORTRAIT INDIVIDUAL CATEGORY

CHRISTOPHER ZEDANO, USA

Jeff, (from IntimateNYC series)

I come from Lima, Peru and I have been residing in New York City since 2002. My interest in photography emerged while I was processing images at a photo studio. My enthusiasm intensified after witnessing a friend’s passionate commitment to photography. I began by simply taking casual photographs during my free time.

The image enclosed is part of my current personal photo project called intimateNYC (www.intimateNYC.com) in which I portray different New Yorkers in their homes. The project involves implied nudity.

For this session, I happened to have the opportunity to work with Jeff who is a very delightful person who recently discovered the joy of cross dressing. In this image I wanted to capture him as half Jeff and half Jenn (the name he uses when he cross dresses) in a delicate pose while showing the beauty of his home.

~

Image © Andrew Ng

THIRD PRIZE, PORTRAIT INDIVIDUAL CATEGORY

ANDREW ROBERT NG, Singapore

Kenny

Andrew Ng is currently in his final semester at the Nanyang Technological University where he is majoring in photography and digital imaging. His photography draws from the realm of the familiar by using his life as a point of reference. The people he photographs include family, friends and often, even himself.

Standing behind it, the camera gives him an opportunity to step back from his relationships and to tune into a different mode of thinking. He becomes compelled to scrutinize reactions to the camera and to himself, the photographer. An awareness of traits never noticed, burgeons through the viewfinder. His engagement with these traits leads him to craft images, which capture a certain poetic truth - a truth that cuts right to the inner core of his sitters.
The artist shoots primarily on black & white film, which he hand-processes, scans and then edits with Photoshop.

Through the black & white medium, he crafts portraits - dominated by darkness - that offer moments, which are disconnections from reality. The artist typically works by firstly choosing the location for the shoot and then allowing his subjects to react to it. The image, Kenny, was shot on T-MAX 100 film with a Hasselbald camera in a family car. High-contrast lighting coupled with the sitter, Kenny, projecting a heightened version of himself, gives the work a dramatic staged quality.

Andrew is currently working on his final year project for his university’s graduation show. The work consists of black & white portraits of anti-heroic young Singaporean men. This work, like most of his other work, brings across feelings of loneliness, ennui and hints of male eroticism.

~

Click image to see Series. All images © Aglae Bory

FIRST PRIZE, PORTRAIT STORY CATEGORY

AGLAÉ BORY, France

Corrélations

Corrélations is a series of photographs which portray the daily life of a woman living alone with her child throughout several years during different seasons.

Each picture depicts a moment, an interaction, between the little girl and her mother. As they are self-portraits, there is no spontaneity in the photographs, they are all set up and very organized.

The shutter release is held in my hand, visible to the spectator in order to indicate the shooting moment.

The decisive moment.

Even if the photographs seem very silent, they reveal the bond that exists between a mother and her child. The beautiful enigma of the immutable bond. They also reveal the hard task of being alone with a child, the elsewhere, the outside, the World and the invisible solitude that we barely mention.

Love.

I wanted to show all those little intimate and harmless things that we are repeating everyday and which we like to call life… I felt the need to photograph them in order to be displayed, to be seen and to be looked upon as an attempt to file time.

The time of this woman with her child.

Women’s time…

After studying art history at the University of Aix-en-Provence and photography at the National School of Photography of Arles, Aglaé Bory moved to Paris where she has been living and working for the past ten years. Her intimate style vacillates between the worlds of reportage and fiction.

The human figure is at the center of her artistic reflection. She uses the portrait genre and the self-portrait to reveal the complexity of life. The unseen such as an emotion or the personal history, the “off camera” of everyone. Aglaé Bory seeks to show what is hidden, to fix what is volatile. No words, no comments, just the image.

“Correlations” is a series of self-portraits with her daughter, photographed over several seasons. The series has been showed at several French and European festivals (Festival Voies Off-Arles 2009, Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise 2009).
Miss Bory won a special price from the Bourse du Talent 2009. Her work has also been the subject of several personal and collective exhibitions (Cahors juillet 2009, Bibliothèque Nationale Française à Paris 2009/10). A publication by Transphotographic Press is also in progress.

Simultaneously, Aglaé Bory works on another project called “Demeure” in which she depicts the Parisian immigrant workers' home.

~

Click image to see Series. All images © Rachel Lim

SECOND PRIZE, PORTRAIT STORY CATEGORY

RACHEL LIM, Singapore

The Scene

I am currently pursuing my Bachelor for Fine Arts, majoring inPhotography and Digital Imaging at the Nanyang Technological University, School of Arts, Design and Media in Singapore. Having lived in Singapore for my entire 24 years of life, my familiarity of it's society and keen interest in various social aspects has allowed me to gain confidence in integrating and interacting with different generations and factions of society. Photography as a medium has played a very important role in my journey of exploration. The process of capturing the image allows me to develop an understanding of social rituals and examine the complexities of human behavior, emotions and their relationship to the environment.

I began my journey by referencing Scott Schuman in The Sartorialist and his street fashion documentary. I approached young people whose fashion style caught my attention and I would photograph them, without giving them any directions as how to pose. I placed myself in locations I am familiar with and where the masses would come together and also dress up for the occasion such as flea markets, parties or clubs. In these places, I could find different groups of people enjoying themselves, mingling and socializing, shopping, and loitering.

After a while, I noticed how other passers-by respond to my shoot. Some would flee the scene while others would stand by to watch or ask me about my project and if I could photograph them too. The public attention I was stirring up caused my sitter to be more conscious of their body language and poses. Through this process, I became more aware of how the presence of a camera affects people, in particular, amongst girls around my age in Singapore’s contemporary youth, which really intrigued me and hence I started focusing my attention on them.

What started out as a ‘one subject per frame’ project revolving around individual style became an exploration of how the women in contemporary youth respond to their environment and vice versa when being put in a spot of attention like a celebrity. I began photographing at night due to the dramatic effect I could create with my flash and the attention it begets. With my lights and camera, I caused a commotion and created tension in the scene where I, (the photographer) become a “director” only having influence over my “player” (the sitter). Whatever happens on this stage becomes my platform for exploring the behavior of girls and their emotions through the scene I created.

Whether it is a projection of subconscious or conscious behavior, the chemistry and the interaction and reaction brought about from the sitter to the by-stander and vice versa, revealed a range of emotions that I would rarely come across just through the plain observation of people. These emotions are also sentiments from my past experiences and feelings that I can recognize and through my identification with the women. Have I discovered a reflection in myself being a part of them?

~

Click image to see Series. All images © Diego Ravier

THIRD PRIZE, PORTRAIT STORY CATEGORY

DIEGO RAVIER, France

Theater of Life

Diego Ravier, as a photographer and his mother Barbara Zacci, as assistant and writer, have been exploring, for the last three years, the unfair discrimination and social rejection on a determined number of people who live with stigma diseases.

Under the commission of an ONG, they reached Mokolo (Cameroun), a town that borders on Nigeria and Chad. In a lepers village they got in touch with a large amount of sick persons and their relatives.

They decided on an approach to the disease under new circumstances refusing the after-effects and the pathetic view. Therefore they focused on a portrait series that goes beyond the biblical stigma and rediscover this subject a human beings.

Life again becomes like a theatre where the actors have a place to laugh and to make the others laugh, always keeping their dignity.

~

Many congratulations to COURTNEY BARTON'S Technicolor Dreamcoat for winning the People's Choice Vote which obtained 1,053 votes.