Competition Winners

1ST PRIZE: Owen Harvey

“I look at pictures that lure me. In my opinion, they lure me because they produce an “alchemy” that keeps me interested. It’s as if they ask me questions that I cannot answer, but it’s the questioning that is important…The conversation. This picture has me wondering … Why she’s there? what the look straight towards me holds? Her tight skirt, how old is she, should I be looking? Why am I looking? The prison-like bars behind her? Her red knees and bruises, her perfect face make-up. It’s a very well-taken photograph that allows the viewer to see the artist’s choices as well as the subject, which is another of my requirements to remain engaged.” — Nadav Kander

2ND PRIZE: Bob Newman

“This picture looks so simple but actually, I think is very complex. It works so well because of the format chosen which places the boy dead center, just as if I was standing there, staring at him. Every surface millimeter in this picture is distressed. The blue metal, the feathers, and feet of the cockerel, the boy’s face, hair, hands, and jacket. And then the best till last, the curious look towards me (the viewer) asking me to make sense of this. Is the boy distressed too? what part does the bird play? pet or pot? This is a picture really full of life, and I’m not sure what kind of a life.” — Nadav Kander

3RD PRIZE: Amy Woodward

“By virtue of the photographer’s intentioned yet delicate approach, the almost inevitable rigidity, and inauthenticity that traditionally characterizes staged family portraiture, is replaced with something markedly more sincere: a deeply intriguing and profoundly sensitive image that beautifully imparts the essentialities of the subject – love, tenderness, and care, whilst evoking the work of photographic greats like Mary Ellen Mark and Dorothea Lange.” — The Independent Photographer Editors