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The Winners of the 2010 Young Photographers Competition.

This is the fourth year running that shots has sponsored an international competition for current and graduating photography students. The aim of adding visual interest to the Directory has always been a secondary consideration to celebrating and nurturing new talent, and our primary aim with the competition is to help and support emerging photographers worldwide and present their work to potential commissioners.

It has now become a major event, with yet another record entry. The competition is launched through some 1,600 photography tutors around the world, who pass on details to their current and recently graduated students. Without the tutors, the competition would never have taken off; we remain deeply grateful to them for their invaluable assistance and support.

This year's theme 'Sublime' presented a particular challenge to entrants - not because the word is impossible to translate - it is the same in most European languages; it is just that we have lost the original sense of what the word means and represents. The sublime is about extremes - of weather, emotion, situation - things beyond our everyday life and comprehension. There's a lot of latitude there: wars, disasters, sensational events, extremes of emotion, place and weather - none of which tends to figure strongly in the lives of photography students preparing their final presentations.

The judges take technical excellence and the ability to frame a decent shot for granted - so we are really forced to make decisions based on how well the theme has been addressed. Just like a commissioning editor, we want to see them take that commission to places we never dreamt of.

Ten entries were outstanding, and they are featured on this page. Our overall winner, Melanie Clark, uses existing photos, projected onto the space that her relations once inhabited: an internal, personal and emotionally charged sublime that is also the most riveting family album we have ever seen.

The other winners have produced such a broad range of stunning work that we feel entirely justified in the choice of theme - for it is all extraordinary and memorable work. We wish all our entrants well in the difficult times ahead, launching their careers, which we hope we have helped in some tiny way.

Steve Hare

Click on the images to view full size versions

CLICK HERE to see the non-placing finalists of the shots Young Photographers Competition

First Prize

Photographer: Melanie Clark
Portfolio Title: Archive Revival
Email: melanieclark@live.co.uk
Country: UK
Website: www.melanieclark.co.uk
College: University of Brighton
Within the series I have literally cast from the past into the present, by digitally projecting, larger than life, images previously captured by relatives, reintroducing them around the same space in which they were taken and rephotographing them with a medium-format film camera.

Taken from a new-found cache of jumbled negatives charting one side of my heritage from the 1920s onwards – instead of letting them lazily hide in drawers, unsorted, becoming estranged from their descendants or even themselves – I hoped to invoke the vivacious occasions of history. Through their scanning I wished to bring to life the haunting images of lives left behind. I have attempted to resurrect family members and ordinary moments, releasing them from boxes back into their environment through different periods – their home.

I have thus reconnected to my heritage and added a new dimension to my own family album, yet hope that the viewer is able to relate to these scenes. I think that an audience can relate to this subject, in terms of simple curiosity when contemplating the previous inhabitants of a building encountered, or perhaps their own personal history – lived but perhaps forgotten, maybe even unknown.

In one image, my own grandmother walks in the same garden in two time zones and on two different layers of snow and in the cover image of my father and the arched window, he as a youth looks in from outside to the faded glory of his house. Both these images open up questions on lives lived, the passage of time and imbue a sense of nostalgia.

I have enjoyed the process although it has been complicated, with plenty of logistical and technical issues – which having now been resolved, I look forward to continuing the idea.

The works have been installed inside silver studded, black wooden lightboxes, built for me by my brother, who is in shown in one of the images.

Second Prize

Photographer: Lauris Naglins
Portfolio Title: Kolhoz
Email: lauris.naglins@gmail.com
Country: Latvia, based UK
Website: www.laurisnaglins.com
College: The Arts Institute at Bournemouth
I began working as a professional photographer in the National News Agency LETA in Latvia before moving to England in 2007 to study Commercial Photography at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth, and graduated in 2009 with Foundation Degree. My photo essay about situation in Latvia in the context of global economical downturn was made in early 2009 when economic experts ware warning about Latvia being on the edge of bankruptcy. In 2007 Latvia had the fastest growing economy in Europe. Now, however, because of the international economic climate, the growth has slowed dramatically.
The Latvian media have reported growing unemployment (12% of the population) and experts forecast it to be 16% in 2010. To prevent the country from bankruptcy, the government has taken international loans which are estimated at close to 3 billion (GBP). The crisis affects everyone but the most vulnerable sectors are the poor and people in the countryside, especially the young generation. The animosity against current political elite is rising and many people are leaving, seeking better life abroad.
Nils (the main person in the series) used to have well-paid work in the auto trade business and lost his job in 2008 when he emigrated to the UK to work in a factory and be able to pay his outstanding mortgage for his flat in Riga.

Third Prize

Photographer: Tim Banks
Portfolio Title: Human Bodies
Email: timbanksphotography@yahoo.co.uk
Country: UK
Website: www.timbanksphotography.co.uk
College: University of Wales Newport
My practice is fluid within the photographic medium and is lead by many influences. The majority of which are underpinned by interests in social and landscape identity as well as exploring unconventional beauty. Whether it is landscape or portrait is the subject I try to push the documentary base of my images to encompass new conceptual and aesthetic aspirations suitable to my subjects.

The series Human Bodies, is a set of photographic portraits that combine reverse nudes and layers of human cells. .

The portraits explore notions and perception of human identity, by breaking the conventions of photographic portraiture and offering up a sublime alternative vision of the human self. It is not the conventional notion of individual identity that is generally associated with portraiture but a vision that suggests a collective human identity as organisms made up of flesh and blood and one that contains beauty on many levels. They combine desexualised and (what could be termed) ‘non-portraits’ in an abstracted vision of the body. The images reference and manipulate the photographic relationship to science, by merging and distorting these combined elements. .

Identity, overlooked beauty, and new ways of considering our self image and knowledge of our own identity, sit at the base of this project.

Fourth Prize

Photographer: Kalle Kataila
Portfolio Title: Landscapes and contemplations
Email: mail@kallekataila.com
Country: Finland
Website: www.kallekataila.com
College: The University of Art and Design Helsinki
My photographs capture the experience of being present in a moment and observing the landscape in stillness. Being part of the landscape that we interconnect with can lead us to explore our relationship and understanding with the environment around us. Landscapes can help us to reflect on our role as humans in the ever-changing diversity of our planet’s landscapes.

These are moments of contemplation captured. A landscape shows nature in all its varied beauty, but also our ability to shape it in a harmonious and sustainable way. Landscapes also reveal the impacts of our acts that might not always be positive. The relationship between man and landscape is constantly redefining itself as man builds and changes his surroundings and the climate.

The challenge is to preserve the beauty of the natural world, and to alter it wisely. Increasing awareness of climate change and the ongoing financial crisis pushes us to more closely consider our impacts, and underlines a responsibility to take care of the environment and landscape that we are creating for future generations.

There is the opportunity to pause, carefully observe and consider what we want to see on the horizon.

Runner Up

Photographer: David Favrod
Portfolio Title: Gaijin
Email: dfavrod@hotmail.com
Country: Switzerland
Website:
College: ECAL Lausanne

Runner Up

Photographer: Olga Cafiero
Portfolio Title: Curioso
Email: olga.cafiero@gmail.com
Country: Switzerland
Website:
College: ECAL Lausanne

Runner Up

Photographer: Pavel Tomanec
Portfolio Title: Colours of Spring
Email: photography108@gmail.com; p.tomanec@my.westminster.ac.uk
Country: Czech Republic, based UK
Website:
College: Westminster University of London
Thirty five miles north of Agra lies small town Vrindavan. The town and the surrounding area known as Vraja are the most important locations in India where the spring festival of colours Holi takes place. The ecstatic celebrations last for a week and each place in the Vraja area (approx. 135 square miles) has its own highlight. In the beginning the festival goes to the ancient village Barsana then to village Nandagram, then to Vrindavan, Makhrai, Jaav, Goverdhan and Dauji. The history of these picturesque villages goes back to the sublime Vedic times. Holi serves as enactment of the intimate human dealings which were cultivated at Vedic times. The festivities take place in the temple palaces and are so crowded, but this is a different kind of crowd, it is like sublime human energy in which everyone is united in a single desire. The photographs depict the sublime mood the festival carries just like fragrance is carried on the air. Today the mood is threatened by the ill effects of the all-devouring modern way of life, which at fast rate consumes native societies, alluring them by the flickering light of technology. They celebrate a nature as the real habitation for human beings, a harmony where joyful people offer their love to their beloved Lord and receive the same love in abundance in return. In Vraja the Holi elevates the female role – by the power of chastity the women are given extraordinary strength and beauty. They are the real heroes and Holi is the time for them to show their prowess. Holi is a spring of love and everyone is welcomed.

Pavel is a freelance video/photographer. He currently researches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies yoga and religions of India for his upcoming book Yatra: A Pilgrimage into the Heart of India and documentary film entitled Rasa Yatra.

Runner Up

Photographer: Tereza Vlcková
Portfolio Title: Two
Email: info@terezavlckova.com
Country: Czech Republic
Website: www.terezavlckova.com
College: Tomas Bata University
(Between Dream And Reality)

How easy it seems to impugn reality. To confuse reality in to fiction and the other way round… To create a new person, but not personality.

There are always two of us. The alter ego, someone ‘inside us’ or The Someone who is like you (the physiologically and psychologically related) – TWIN.

These pictures refer to the elements inspired by classical painting, film production (Stanley Kubrick´s The Shining, Tim Burton´s Sleepy Hollow) and religious paintings and themes. I also tried to doubt the established role of children related to their froliscomeness, sweetness and loveworthiness. I wanted to emphasise their own personality

Runner Up

Photographer: Zuzana Vajdova
Portfolio Title: Impressions
Email: zuzana.vajdova@gmail.com
Country: Slovakia
Website: www.zuzanavajdova.eu
College: Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava
The series ‘Impressions’ was originally made for a school assignment. The topic was ‘Between painting and photography’. I deliberately chose to use a low quality pinhole camera to give me an imperfect image. Like a painting in comparison with an unmanipulated photograph, the pinhole camera offers a non-authentic image of reality.

When photographing the scenes from nature I was inspired by the visual style of lomography. It purposely relies on cameras producing imperfect picture of the reality around us. The faults, that are unacceptable for academic dogma and professional practice, lomography puts on pedestal and celebrates their aesthetics.

For something to be called sublime, it not only has to be beautiful and prepossessing, but it cannot be something definable, touchable, repeatable. In my photographs, I did not want to create a simple two dimensional reproduction of something beautiful in front of me. I wanted to mediate the transient aspect of beauty and nature.

Special Commendation

Photographer: Merve Unsal
Portfolio Title: New York Times Photographs
Email: merve.unsal@gmail.com
Country: Turkey, based USA
Website: www.merveunsal.com
College: Parsons The New School for Design, New York
Photojournalism continues to be one of the primary functions of photography. Certain photographs have formed our collective memories of a historic event; the ‘moment’ that Robert Capa captured during the Spanish Civil War of a falling soldier, went beyond merely showing that instant to become the defining face of the war. Such photographic moments are a critical part of information sources, the most important of which in the United States is the New York Times. New York Times, until recently, featured only one image on their cover, taking a radical approach in publishing. On their website, although the images are never the most prominent element, there are slide shows with distinct headings. These slideshows consist of 10-12 images, making a claim almost to encapsulate or summarize the given heading (e.g. Women of Afghanistan). I have taken these images and without editing any out, collapsed them together to create a single image; each headline corresponds to one image. This approach has enabled me to think about how I process these images or whether I process them at all. Furthermore, I was able to reconsider my understanding of the editing process, which images “make” it to the slideshow? Is there an iconography of photojournalism? What kinds of patterns emerge when you put all these images literally on top of each other? These ‘photographs’ do not draw conclusions, but rather start to pose questions on issues that are critical to understanding photojournalism and our collective processing of visual information.