2021 International Photography Competition

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s 2021  International Photography Competition at FMoPA!

This year we received many hundreds of entries and votes for our competition and our jury category winners are displayed below. 

Make sure you check out winners in each category:  People/Portraits, Places/Landscapes/Drone, Documentation/Photojournalism, Still Life, Abstract Photography, and Conceptual Photography 

People/Portraits

First Place:
Jelena Jankovic (1985)
Selfie Culture, 2017
Serbia

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

I spotted these men lit up in the crowd of a concert. Selfie culture has begun to dominate our existence. Social media has become one of the largest epidemics that affect people’s relationships. While we are waiting for the feedback and approval of others, we miss the opportunity to live and enjoy the present. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jelena Jankovic explores human nature and the psychological aspects of relationships through a full spectrum of photographic genres, from documentary to theatre, fashion, and conceptual photography. Her photographs and projects are created through exploring people, movement, situations, sensations, light, color, and imagination. She has exhibited around the world and has received numerous significant international awards for her work. In 2018, she published her first monograph book Kolo: 70 Years Later presenting the traditional dances of Serbia. She has been credited for photography in over 40 theatre and dance productions all over the world.

Second Place:
Shelli Weiler (1996)
Kissing Booth Girls, 2019
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series “ENJOY house” documents the rise and proliferation of made-for-Instagram selfie factories throughout New York and Los Angeles. The series presents forms of escapist amusement as hostile and uninhabitable environments. Through the negation of color, this series focuses on how the construction of fantasy inevitably entails its own failure. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Shelli Weiler is an artist from New York with a BA in Studio Art from Wesleyan University, where she studied photography and digital art practices. Her work primarily revolves around the fabrication of identity and sexuality, using portraiture to document performance in a non-documentarian way. She is currently based in Brooklyn with her twin sister. 

Third Place:
Hossein Fardinfard (1985)
Blackout, 2019
Iran/Netherlands

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Merry, one of the victims of the war in Abkhazia in 1992. Her brother and husband were both murdered by Abkhaz separatist forces. With a wounded leg, she escaped and hid in a forest for two weeks. At the end of the war, she reached her new home in Tskaltubo, a tiny town in west-central Georgia. Since then, she lives alone in a small room inside a huge abandoned building that had been a luxury sanitarium in the Soviet Union era.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Fardinfard is an Iranian/Dutch documentary and portraiture photographer who questions in his photography human dignity, identity, and emotions.

Places/Landscape/Drone

First Place:
Anna Siggelkow (1981)
Placeholder of Nonentity, ongoing series
Germany

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Within the ongoing project, Platzhalter des Nichts (Placeholder of nonentity), Anna Siggelkow decontextualizes places and transfers them into a new context. She shows a world flattened between figuration and abstraction. Objects clearly defined in their function develop a strange life of their own. The mortal human body finds no place in a world of things. Hence, one searches in vain for patina, and if so, it seems to be deliberately added rather than being part of a weathering. Anna Siggelkow questions the human endeavor to assign a clear function to things. She is concerned with the design of spaces and the relationship of people to objects.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

In 2021 her work was selected for the slideshow ‘Rethinking Nature’ – EMOP and shortlisted for the Belfast Photo Festival. In 2020 her work was shortlisted for the Athens Photo Festival. In 2019 she won the ‘Reclaim Award’ and was chosen for the 3rd circle of ‘Parallel – European Photo Based Platform’ 2019-2020, a European-based mentorship to support emerging photo artist. In 2018 she was awarded the Life Framer Photography Award twice and was selected for the portfolio walk 2018 (Deutsche Fotografische Akademie) at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Germany. 

Second Place:
Austin Irving (1984)
Spring Street Community Garden, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2017
United States of America

 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series Plants in Exile is a study of homocentrism and its effects on plant life in urban environments. This series explores the intersection between flora and city planning, specifically how plants are manipulated and distorted to the whims of city dwellers. Are these plants victims of the myopic relationship humans have with their environments? Or are these plants defiant heroes, surviving despite human intrusions?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 Austin Irving is a visual artist who works with large format analog photography. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Hong Kong, India, Germany, France, and across The United States. She has won multiple awards and she was an Artist-In-Residence at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India in 2017 and aboard The S.S. Vallejo at The Varda Artist Residency in Sausalito, CA in 2019. Her images have been featured in The LA Times, Wired, Slate, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, and Artweek LA, among others.

 

Third Place:
Matthew Portch
The Wall Frame, Arizona, 2015 
England

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Meteor Crater is an attraction in Arizona. Decades ago, this spot was once the visitors’ car park. Upon entering, the curious site of this wall with a rectangular hole appears more contemplative than the crater itself.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Portch grew up in a typical middle-class suburb in the U.K. During the ’70s and ’80s, television and movies were his favorite distraction, especially anything from the USA. The backdrop of the North American scenery was the perfect antidote to the humdrum of the English city suburbs and countryside. Drawing on his childhood memories, the visuals of the American landscape have remained a major influence on his photography. He likes to keep his pictures simple, clean, and graphic, which resonates with his background in design. He also wants them to be free of people and any notable present-day objects. Almost as if the image acts as a snapshot of his own childhood memories; the picture could have been taken now or forty years ago.

Nature/Science/Animals

First Place / Best in Show :
Austin Irving (1984)
Interior with Penguin Trash Cans, Dau Go Cave, Halong Bay, Vietnam, 2019
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series Show Caves is a collection of large format photographs that explores the anthropocentric tendencies of modern tourism seen in domestic and international show caves. This series highlights the tension that exists between the staggering natural beauty of caves and the renovations made to transform these spaces into spectacular tourist attractions. Are these additions acts of vandalism disrupting a delicate eco-system for the sake of commercial profit? Or do these human interventions draw attention to the preservation of caves and make hard-to-access natural wonders available for appreciation?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Austin Irving is a visual artist who works with large format analog photography. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Hong Kong, India, Germany, France, and across The United States. She has won multiple awards and she was an Artist-In-Residence at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India in 2017 and aboard The S.S. Vallejo at The Varda Artist Residency in Sausalito, CA in 2019. Her images have been featured in The LA Times, Wired, Slate, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, and Artweek LA, among others.

Second Place:
Michael Jeffrey Wille
Eupholus Schoenherrii, 2019 
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

This photograph is from a body of work titled ‘Morphology,’ where insects were placed on vibrant backgrounds to encourage wonder, while also utilizing the repulsion created by insects.  This in turn creates a push/pull response with the photo.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 Michael Jeffrey Wille (USA) is a lens-based artist working in the greater Midwest region.  His work is meant to provoke responses across all spectrums of human emotion.

Third Place:
Kristin Schnell
Parakeet (Ziegensittich), 2020
Germany

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Kristin Schnell is drawn to the beauty of birds, their shimmering feathers, and their presence in heaven and on earth. They are a symbol for spirituality and the flight of thoughts. And yet they are often a prisoner in human hands, in cages that limit their free flight. Schnell builds small photo sets, lights the set with photo flash lamps and leaves it up to her birds whether they want to present themselves in front of the camera or not. The photo sets provide an abstract environment for the birds. The colors of the set harmonize with the colorful feathers. The bird is the focus, and nothing distracts from its uniqueness.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Kristin Schnell has been a freelance fashion photographer for over 20 years. In 2019/20 she was nominated for a Masterclass on the website Lensculture and has been working as an art photographer since then. She has received numerous awards for her photographs. Her main subject is animals, and she uses photography to aesthetically tell the individual stories of animals.

Documentation/Photojournalism

First Place
Caspar Claasen
Grandma’s Hug, 2020
The Netherlands 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

1st June 2020. In middle of the corona pandemic, during the partial lockdown, we
surprised our (grand)ma with a few safe hugs in plastic foil. Grandma (78) had
not had any physical contact with anyone for a few months.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 Casper Claasen is a Dutch photographer based in Amsterdam and he is fascinated by extraordinary interactions between people, often individuals, and their everyday surroundings. An apparently everyday moment can become a short story when photographed.

Second Place:
Anabel Burin
Melissa & Harvey, Verdun, 7 am, 2021
Argentina/Canada

 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series Single Mothers is a photographic study of solo mothers’ homes and routine during the pandemic within current Quebec society (Solo mom is a term given to mothers without describing their relationship status, but rather indicating raising a child alone, whether it is involuntary or by choice). This image portrays Melissa and her son Harvey during their morning routine on a regular weekday.

 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Anabel Burin is an Argentinian born, photographer and graphic designer based in Montreal, Qc. She chose to become a photographer and use this medium as a form of visual storytelling. Her intention is to find the magic on what others consider mundane, the everyday details that are lost in the routine and the deep significance found in the apparently insignificant. Through her work, Anabel plays with light, space, color, and texture to narrate the story of her subjects with authenticity.

 

 

Third Place:
Oculus
Shot By Police-Miami, FL, 1992
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

A policeman in pursuit of a suspect fired a shot, missing his intended target but striking this 18-year-old boy.  The bullet caused spinal damage leaving the boy permanently paralyzed from the waist down.  The county settled for $50,000 but court and lawyers’ fees left the family with about $17,000; not even enough to cover medical expenses.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

A native New Yorker, Oculus began taking pictures at an early age when he was gifted a twin-lens reflex camera by a relative.  As a university anthropology student, he became involved in a project that required him to photograph garbage collected from trash cans throughout the five boroughs of New York.  When the prints came back from the lab, he noticed that not only did they contain a wealth of sociological information but that some of them were visually and aesthetically fascinating.  It was a photographic epiphany, the moment he realized that virtually any object however mundane or insignificant could be photographed to produce a beautiful image. 

Abstract Photography

First Place:
Vera Nowottny (1970)
Short Supply, 2020
Germany

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Short Supply represents the shortage of toilet paper in the first lockdown of the pandemic. A photographic interpretation of a toilet roll using a camera obscura and an analogue recording medium in large format.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

In her artistic work Vera Nowottny pursues two photographic perspectives: one involves seeing and the situational reaction to external processes, for which she uses digital photography. For the other, she works in an analogue manner, with the camera obscura and sheet films as recording media. This allows her technical flexibility in generating images that cannot be implemented using digital photography. The origin of the images lies in an introspection. Both objective information and subjective experiences, comments, emotions, and sensory impressions play together and allow us to speak of socially critical and culturally relevant topics. Another focus on materiality in her work is based on an increasing human loss of haptic handling of materials during digitization. This examination manifests itself in her choice of consistency, tactility, and color of the materials. Based on experiments, contrary to current trends, she gives these properties a role intrinsic to the image.

Second Place:
Anna Siggelkow (1981)
Placeholder of Nonentity, ongoing
Germany  

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Within the ongoing project, Platzhalter des Nichts (Placeholder of nonentity), Anna Siggelkow decontextualizes places and transfers them into a new context. She shows a world flattened between figuration and abstraction. Objects clearly defined in their function develop a strange life of their own. The mortal human body finds no place in a world of things. Hence, one searches in vain for patina, and if so, it seems to be deliberately added rather than being part of a weathering. Anna Siggelkow questions the human endeavor to assign a clear function to things. She is concerned with the design of spaces and the relationship of people to objects.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

In 2021 her work was selected for the slideshow ‘Rethinking Nature’ – EMOP and shortlisted for the Belfast Photo Festival. In 2020 her work was shortlisted for the Athens Photo Festival. In 2019 she won the ‘Reclaim Award’ and was chosen for the 3rd circle of ‘Parallel – European Photo Based Platform’ 2019-2020, a European based mentorship to support emerging photo artist. In 2018 she was awarded the Life Framer Photography Award  twice and was selected for the portfolio walk 2018 (Deutsche Fotografische Akademie) at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Germany. 

Third Place:
Alex Nyerges (1957)
Tarpon Springs, #2335, 5-30-18, 2018
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Seeking out the elements of beauty that surround us, so often unseen and neglected in the built and natural worlds, his work uses sunlight and its shadows to create works that are both modern and timeless.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alex Nyerges is an award-winning photographer, curator, author, and photo historian who has exhibited across the United States, Australia, and Europe. His work is in collections in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Ohio, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Tampa, Richmond, Budapest, and elsewhere. His work has been exhibited in Atlanta, Budapest, Canberra, Houston, Richmond, Vienna, and Washington, D.C., among other places.

Still Life

First Place:
Ion Zupcu (1960)
Etudes on Glass, October 20, 2019, 2019
Romania/United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 To create Etudes on Glass (a series of abstract photographs inspired by the piano music of Phillip Glass), it was necessary to create a cohesive visual framework and systematic language of color and form, that inherits the multiple-layered structure of Phillip Glass’ music. Moving beyond the structure to the emotive, melancholic nature of the music, the color blue was chosen as the consistent tonal background upon which the bright colors of the foreground objects are contrasted.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ion Zupcu is an artist and fine art printer based in New York whose work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Detroit Institute of Art. Detroit, and Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, amongst others.

Second Place:
Felix Schöppner (1990)
Black Hole, 2020
Germany  

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Perception is the recognition of an object in our environment with the help of our 5 senses. With the help of technical devices, we can exceed the limits that are set biologically for us. The perception of invisible subjects, forces and conditions therefore often first takes place in an abstract way with values that are assigned to certain parameters in a graph, drawing or a scaled model. Since size relationships play a decisive role here, in some cases you are forced to display the relationships of objects proportionally to one another to ensure that they are clearly recognizable. The series Cognition deals with this topic by using terms from the fields of physics and astronomy and presenting them in simplified models.

 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Schöppner graduated in 2021 from the University of Applied Science Darmstadt with a project about structures and shapes taken from photographs of German national parks, with which he created sculptures and photographed them in a still life set. In his early career he worked as a documentary and architecture photographer, but since 2017 he is focusing on still life photography with a link to sculpture and installation.

Third Place:
JP Terlizzi
Pin Cushion, 2021
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series Holding Arabesque investigates our relationship with food and nostalgia and how both are used as markers to define emotions. Inspired by the abrupt shifts brought on by the pandemic, he used whimsical, playful, and nostalgic tableaux choreographed in disciplined arrangements to address the delicate balance between stability and uncertainty.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JP Terlizzi is a New York City photographer whose contemporary practice explores themes of memory, relationship, and identity. His images are rooted in the personal and heavily influenced around the notion of home, legacy, and family. He is curious how the past relates and intersects with the present and how the present enlivens the past, shaping one’s identity.

Conceptual Photography

First Place:
Anna Siggelkow (1981)
Placeholder of Nonentity, ongoing
Germany 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION


Within the ongoing project, Platzhalter des Nichts (Placeholder of nonentity), Anna Siggelkow decontextualizes places and transfers them into a new context. She shows a world flattened between figuration and abstraction. Objects clearly defined in their function develop a strange life of their own. The mortal human body finds no place in a world of things. Hence, one searches in vain for patina, and if so, it seems to be deliberately added rather than being part of a weathering. Anna Siggelkow questions the human endeavor to assign a clear function to things. She is concerned with the design of spaces and the relationship of people to objects.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

In 2021 her work was selected for the slideshow ‘Rethinking Nature’ – EMOP and shortlisted for the Belfast Photo Festival. In 2020 her work was shortlisted for the Athens Photo Festival. In 2019 she won the ‘Reclaim Award’ and was chosen for the 3rd circle of ‘Parallel – European Photo Based Platform’ 2019-2020, a European based mentorship to support emerging photo artist. In 2018 she was awarded the Life Framer Photography Award  twice and was selected for the portfolio walk 2018 (Deutsche Fotografische Akademie) at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Germany. 

Second Place:
Vero Bielinski (1988)
Lockdown Portrait: Desperate, 2021
Poland/Germany

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The corona pandemic has held people around the world in an iron grip for a year. The uncertainty when things will be normal again drives us into a continuous tug-of-war of feelings. The series The Lockdown Portrait shows the rollercoaster rides of emotions. The portrait is colorful and at the same time blurry and depressed. It is reminiscent of underwater images, which symbolically associates with the corona news flood and the feeling of drowning. A nebulous, virus-like veil hovers over the face. The inside evolves to the outside.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Vero Bielinski graduated from the University Hochschule Darmstadt in 2013. In addition, she studied 6 months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland. While in Kraków Bielinski focused on painting and printmaking. Gaining skills and receiving exposure to the traditional methods and techniques of old Renaissance masters. In her practice, Bielinski travels several months per year around the world to create photographic art. Since 2012 she has been working as an international freelance photographer. Her work has been exhibited in many shows and awarded numerous prizes.

Third Place:
Ava Williams
Together and Apart, 2021
United States of America

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The series Together and Apart was made to
reflect the current state of the relationship
between Ava Williams and her twin sister
Chloe. How twinhood looks and feels at 24. It shows that although their identities have been intertwined for so long, as they grow into adulthood, they are moving away from
twinhood as they know it. Their lives are no
longer marked with similar memories or
backgrounds, they are growing.

 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ava Williams is a photographer working in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2019 with a BFA in photography. She makes intimate work by documenting or creating when she believes a subject is authentically themself. These images reflect identity as she knows it in her early adulthood. Â