2011 Young Photographers Competition Winners

First Impressions

With this being the fifth annual shots photography competition for graduating students, we realise we’re in danger of launching a tradition. It is, already, many things: a celebration, the chance to explore a theme, an opportunity and – just possibly – a way into an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Why, we are often asked, does the competition bother with a theme each year? Why not just ask people to enter their best or favourite work? There’s a kind of unwritten contract between judges and entrants; we know there’s a strong chance that many will, whatever the theme, enter their strongest work; and often, in fact, their graduation portfolio. We appreciate that entrants, many in their final year on a photography course at universities around the world, are going to be under pressure for time, resources and money; and may well be simply unable to afford to undertake a major shoot.

So we set a theme that opens out opportunities rather than imposes strict and unreasonable limitations. It is by no means a simple matter to come up with themes that, preferably, in a single word, are easily translated and understood; a subject that applies to landscape as much as portrait; art as much as documentary.

We take technical excellence for granted, and when it comes to judging, there is often little difference in the standard of those vying for the top place, and those who didn’t quite make the cut. Viewing the entries in terms of the theme set, therefore, gives us further criteria on which to make our decisions. Undeniably excellent work that has only tenuous links to the theme might not win, but it is unlikely to be eliminated on dogmatic grounds.

The essential idea is to create an environment which is in some ways comparable to the commercial world.
A photographer is commissioned not simply to provide their favourite work, but to respond to a brief, challenge it, and take it beyond the expectations of the commissioners. It is these qualities that we find year after year in the best of the winning entries.

Despite the theme for this year being ‘First Impressions’, the judging process demands that we visit and revisit work; and it is the work that reveals a little more each time, the work that we are delighted to reconsider, the work we talk about, in which we point out little details that fascinate us, that wins through. Sometimes when you reopen a portfolio you’ve had enough; it has nothing else to tell you; and then you look at another set, maybe for the tenth or twentieth time, and are quietly delighted with the opportunity to check it out just once more – and you know they’re in among the winners.

Several entries this year reminded us of last year’s winners. It might have been pure accident – which is fine – or it might have been entrants doing their research and seeing what the judges obviously liked – which is fine, too. But a more savvy entrant would look at last year’s finalists and ensure their work looked nothing like it at all; after all, we want the Directory to have a striking cover year in, year out – but one that always tells a very different story. Equally, when the competition is essentially to try and produce an image for the front cover of a square-format book, we still receive umpteen letterbox-format panoramas; there are obvious lessons for the aspiring commercial photographer in any work they undertake. We always like to offer a chance to tell a story in the theme we set; strong narrative work is always going to do well.

A series of beautiful but entirely random images will not.

This year’s winner Aneta Jelen took the most clichéd of all photographic narratives, weddings, and brought originality and the keenest observational eye to her subject. A cynical approach would have been the easy option; instead, the story is treated with sympathy. Her obvious interest in her subjects is translated intimately in the work. And provides the Directory with its best cover shot yet.

Jaime Alekos is even more intimately involved with his subject matter; his Graffiti Scenes are as much autobiography as observation. “Although the images inevitably document something that happened,” Jaime explains, “my intention was always to pursue the images I had in my head, to pay tribute to my soulmates on the road.” His work is imbued not only with a sympathetic treatment, but a truly up-close-and-personal viewpoint and an electric atmosphere.

Third-placed Nina Hove was one of our 60 finalists last year, when she was studying at the Oslo Fotokunstskole. A further year at Bournemouth, one of the new British universities that regularly provides us with excellent entrants, has obviously helped refine her technique and approach. In Zero Degrees is another series of intimate portraits of people whom it would have been easy to ridicule. Instead, the approach is touching and unbelievably warm, given the prevailing temperature.

The last of our top four, Kristýna Erbenová, was, like the others, within a whisker of winning. Fragile Moments depicts a series of restful, serene images, suspended – often in water, but mostly in time – each in some private ecstasy of solitude. The final image in the series, an old man gazing at the portrait of maybe a lost love, is a beautiful essay in a limited and carefully orchestrated colour palette, which uses light and shade to create infinite depth.

The top four winners come from Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe, and join the other finalists from the length and breadth of Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand: as is becoming the norm for the shots competition, an eclectic mix providing a stunning array of approaches to a challenging theme..

Steve Hare

See the runners up of the shots Young Photographers Competition
See the non-placing finalists of the shots Young Photographers Competition