Clare Grafik selects
Nancy Borowick, New York, NY, United States, for her project Cancer Family

“Nancy Borowick’s black and white photographs document her parents’ lives as they receive parallel treatment for cancer. Rather than a tragic tale of love and loss, this series focuses on the quiet intimacy between a man and woman who share infinitely more than their current challenges. The images are accomplished in both execution and editing but – moreover – are filled with honesty, humour and an everyday empathy that quietly but insistently gives the work a strength and enduring quality I found extremely striking.”

Thoughts about the Competition
“The submissions for the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2014 were extremely dynamic in both method and concept. They showed an exciting range of contemporary approaches, from hybrid technologies that utilise analogue with digital techniques and from highly conceptual art photography to reportage and documentary forms. It is a testament to the diversity and breadth of independent practices happening all over the world that all these works can find a platform and engaged audiences with which to share them.”

Sujong Song selects
Antoine Bruy, Lille, France, for his series, “Scrublands”

“Scrublands by Antoine Bruy is about people who have turned their backs on modern civilization and its emphasis on consumerism and productivity, choosing instead the slower, if inconvenient, life that paces itself with nature. The series shows the changing of the seasons, and the newly adopted routine of daily life that follows the earth’s own rhythm. The photography is quiet, like the life its subjects chose, but also carries within it a deep resonance. The work fuses together then discards the landscape, humans, and objects within each frame, ultimately showing that it was inevitable all these elements would exist in this place. It’s immediately apparent a lot of time was invested into these poetic, polished images. More than anything, authenticity can be read in each photograph, which lends the series an unspoken air of trust. Bruy throws out a sobering question about our way of life and existence. The fact that he does it so eloquently in a language none other than photography is even more exceptional.”

Thoughts about the Competition
“It’s not easy to come across such a selection of diverse and well-executed works as the ones I’ve seen in this competition. In particular, it’s rare to be met with such varied formal experiments so well tailored to each respective subject. I was able to truly see the current direction of contemporary photography at a glance. Starting from the idea of what seeing is, to explorations of color and form, myriad endeavors to define the qualities of photography as a medium, and works based on satirizing our reality through wit and humor, the methodologies employed were as diverse as the works themselves.”

Corey Keller selects
Sian Davey, Totnes/ Brighton, United Kingdom, for her series, “Finding Alice”

“Sian Davey's work stood out for me on each pass through the submissions. Though her subject is intensely personal, the photographs, to me, transcend that specificity and tell a more universal narrative about love, childhood, and family that any viewer could understand. Davey's work has a rawness, a vulnerability that I responded to profoundly, and I appreciated the understatedness of her approach. In less capable hands, a similar project could have felt emotionally manipulative or even exploitative, but there is none of that here. Deeply felt without being sentimental, the work is at once tender and beautifully seen.”

Thoughts about the Competition
“The overall quality of the work was exceptionally high. I appreciated the diversity of the submissions, and the wide range of creative artists who participated. Most of all, I was impressed by the internationalism of the competition. As a result, I had a chance to see a lot of work I would have had no exposure to otherwise, including the artist I chose as my winner.”

Olivier Laurent selects
Laura Stevens, Paris, France, for her series, “Another November”

“Laura Stevens' carefully constructed images go beyond the simple portrayal of the subjects' emotional states; they also give us a window into the photographer's psyche — her motivations and her uncertainties. Her images are aesthetically haunting.”

Thoughts about the Competition
“The sheer number of submissions show that photography is alive and well, and incredibly diverse, which is, without doubt, a very good sign for all of us. Sadly, it quickly became apparent that a majority of photographers still struggle to edit their work.”

Jim Casper selects
Andreas Olesen, Copenhagen, Denmark, for his project Estate

“I was especially taken by the unique method with which anonymous negatives were given new life in the Estate project by Andreas Olesen. By juxtaposing old found photos with contemporary (but out-of-focus) landscapes, the photographer has created multiple layers of meaning and interest, and has created thought-provoking new art without compromising the original imagery. The clever manner of showing the past as a positive image, and the present as a negative, also plays with the notion of photography preserving the past and stopping time. The technique of taping film to glass — and then photographing the film, the tape, the glass, and what can be seen through the glass — also plays with the notion of the picture plane itself in a delightfully fresh manner.”