The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts is delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 International Photography Competition. This year’s IPC is the Museum’s most successful to date, with FMoPA receiving an impressive 2,349 photographs submitted by 542 photographers from 57 different countries. Thank you to everyone who submitted this year, and congratulations to all the winners!
Best In Competition
Angelika Kollin, Estonia, based in United States,
Everyday Saint Lucy
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Everyday Saints is a series depicting “ordinary” people who live unnoticed and are selfless in faith and service to others. It portrays domestic workers from wealthy Cape Town suburbs. Not only do these women make life for their employers easier, but their work continues in their homes, where they carry on the roles of mothers, wives, and caregivers. They take the hard life with patience and acceptance.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Angelika Kollin is a 46-year-old Estonian photographer currently based in Tampa, Florida. She is self-taught and engages with her passion for photography as a tool for the exploration of topics of interhuman connections and equality. Angelika has spent eight years living in African countries, exploring the same topics through various cultures.
Nature/Science/Animals
First Place: Helga Madajova, Slovakia, Connection
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This ethereal image illustrates a pure and strong connection between the horse and its owner.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Medajova is an award-winning equine photographer. Her lifelong love of horses is combined with a passion for photography, resulting in a beautiful combination in the form of fine art photographs of exceptional animals. These are works of art in themselves.
Second Place: Julia Wimmerlin, Ukraine, based in Switzerland, Connection
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
When I saw this particular mother and baby in Tanjung Putting National Park, Borneo, Indonesia, I just could not believe my luck – this was the most human-like, heart-warming scene I’ve witnessed there. Very much like humans, baby orangutans stay with their mothers until they are 7 years old. For the first few years, they don’t leave their mother’s side – they are grabbing to mother’s hair and are carried by their mothers everywhere.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Wimmerlin is a Ukrainian photographer currently living in Switzerland. She has degrees in economics and marketing, which helped launch an international marketing career which changed to photography in 2014. Mostly self-taught, she relies on her advertising experience when constructing an image, often producing a one-shot story. Her strength is creativity combined with true emotions.
Third Place: Fenqiang Frank Liu, China, based in United States, Paradise
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This image is from the ongoing project, “Secret Garden,” which aims to capture the exquisite moments of Great Egrets in their natural Florida habitat. As a photographer, he aims to capture and convey his own subjective view of reality through his work. During post-processing, he enhances the background with mystical lighting, resulting in a dreamy and mysterious world that exists solely in the imagination.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Fenqiang Liu is a nature and fine art photographer based in Orlando whose passion is capturing breathtaking moments of natural beauty and transforming them into captivating art pieces. His photographs not only showcase the enduring beauty of nature but also serve as a reminder of the crucial need for conservation efforts to protect it.
People/Portraits
First Place – Angelika Kollin, Estonia, based in United States, Everyday Saint Lucy
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Everyday Saints is a series depicting “ordinary” people who live unnoticed and are selfless in faith and service to others. It portrays domestic workers from wealthy Cape Town suburbs. Not only do these women make life for their employers easier, but their work continues in their homes, where they carry on the roles of mothers, wives, and caregivers. They take the hard life with patience and acceptance.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Angelika Kollin is a 46-year-old Estonian photographer currently based in Tampa, Florida. She is self-taught and engages with her passion for photography as a tool for the exploration of topics of interhuman connections and equality. Angelika has spent eight years living in African countries, exploring the same topics through various cultures.
Second Place: Rebecca Moseman, United States, The Car Boys
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Billy, Steven, and Paddy are three Irish boys from Carrowbrowne Halting who use an abandoned car as their playground. The boys have no natural areas to play and so display their boredom, frustration, and aggression by destroying the car. Carrowbrowne Halting is located on the outskirts of Galway City next to a waste management site. Although the site was intended to be temporary, it has become a permanent living area.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Virginia native Rebecca Moseman received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1997 and her Master of Fine Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2001. Rebecca was selected by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography, as well as chosen as a recipient of the Joel Connaroe Grant.
Third Place: Julia Wimmerlin, Ukraine, based in Switzerland,
Layers and meanings
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Is she two-faced or best face forward? The image is a single exposure with all effects having been done in-camera.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Wimmerlin is a Ukrainian photographer currently living in Switzerland. She has degrees in economics and marketing, which helped launch an international marketing career which changed to photography in 2014. Mostly self-taught, she relies on her advertising experience when constructing an image, often producing a one-shot story. Her strength is creativity combined with true emotions.
Places/Landscape/Drone
First Place: Jason Au – China – Social Distancing
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Residents of Hong Kong gather in a shopping mall atrium on a Sunday during the Covid-19 pandemic. To tackle Covid-19, the Hong Kong government prohibited group gatherings of more than four persons in public places. Therefore, every group of people maintained a minimum 1.5 meter “social distance” from another group of people. The man with the lanyard around his neck is a compliance officer enforcing the 1.5 meter-minimum social distancing rule.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jason Au is an award-winning street photographer based in Hong Kong. Black and white is his preferred medium of expression. His high-aesthetic works incorporate creative, geometric, and balanced compositions. Jason is represented by the Blue Lotus Gallery in Hong Kong, and his works have been exhibited worldwide.
Second Place: Hilda Champion, Germany, based in United States, Colorful Crab Cages
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Colorful crab cages dot the landscape in the fishing “village’ of Xiapu. It is part of the southern province of Fujian, which produces two-thirds of the world’s seafood. Crab cages, seaweed drying poles, and other pieces of equipment make great photography subjects due to the large scale and seemingly endless repetition.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Hilda Champion is a German/American fine art photographer born near Munich, Germany and living in Naples, Florida since 2001. Hilda shows her work globally in exhibitions and competitions and has received numerous international awards and accolades. In Champion’s photography, she looks for the things not seen. Focusing on the power of suggestion rather than a literal description.
Third Place: Stuart Chape, Australia,
Tree of Life
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This aerial view of Lake Cakora in NSW, Australia was photographed from a helicopter. The lake is tidal but fed by a creek that flows through myrtaceous vegetation that adds a red tannin colour to the water and creates the distinctive dendritic pattern at low tide.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Stuart Chape is an ecologist and award-winning photographer with stand-alone and contributory exhibitions in many locations around the world. While he specializes in aerial landscapes photographed from helicopters and light aircraft, portraits and documentary photography of social issues form an important part of his portfolio.
Documentation/Photojournalism
First Place: Alain Schroeder, Belgium, Dead_Goat_Polo
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Kok Boru is the national sport of Kyrgyzstan. In the village of Uzgen, Osh region, more than 175 horses and men wearing either the classic Soviet tank hat or a Kyrgyz tebetei hat, fight for possession of a young bull. Thousands of riders have come to compete for the prizes offered throughout the day: 10 horses, 10 yaks, 10 camels, and the grand prize of the final game, a Lada brand car.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Belgian photojournalist Alain Schroeder has been working in the industry for over four decades. First, as a sports photographer in the 80’s, he then traveled the world shooting stories focusing on social issues and people. He has won many awards including POYI and WORLD PRESS.
Second Place: Mauro De Bettio, Italy, VENICE OF AFRIC
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
A child aboard a plastic tub moves between canals to reach home on the dramatically polluted water of the lagoon of Makoko, the world’s biggest floating slum. One of the main issues Makoko is facing is the lack of basic infrastructure and services such as electricity, clean water, and sanitation. Despite challenges and lack of basic amenities, the people have a strong sense of community and work together to support one another.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Mauro De Bettio is an accomplished photographer who travels the world year-round with an unpretentious air, shining a light on difficult situations to bring beauty. His intimate perspective sees the essence of an individual and brings it out through each photograph. His collective body of work reveals the strength and resilience of humanity as a whole.
Third Place: Rafael Fabres, Spain, CAFUNE06
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
A group of teenagers play around in a soccer field at Complexo da Penha, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 07, 2015.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Rafael Fabrés is a Madrid photographer and filmmaker specializing in documentary storytelling. He holds a BA in Media Communication (UEM) and a Master’s Degree in Cinematography (ESCAC). Rafael´s work explores the connections between identity, displacement and belonging. After having lived in Central and Latin America for more than a decade working as a photojournalist, he felt compelled to dig deeper into his past experience and expand his visual approach beyond his previous perspective. This led to his first book titled Cafuné (2020), focusing tangentially on the “pacification” of the favelas in Rio.
Abstract
First Place: Julie Kenny, Australia, Crossing Paths
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This aerial photograph captures a vast salt lake in the Australian outback, with a pair of emu footprints meandering across its surface. The photograph showcases the natural beauty of the environment, demonstrating the ways in which nature and wildlife interact. The entire scene tells a unique story of nature’s course in the harsh yet alluring environment of Western Australia.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Julie Kenny is a photographic visual artist residing in Perth, Western Australia. She constantly pushes the boundaries of traditional landscapes by exploring naturalism while abstracting photographic realism, seeking to capture the ephemeral nature of remote environments and document their transience, fragility, and resilience.
Second Place: Alexej Sachov, Ukraine, Oceans Blood – 1
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This photograph captures the beauty and violence of the ocean’s depths, influenced by the emotions of the devastation of the war in Ukraine. Taken during a night scuba dive, the moving water and air bubbles evoke a sense of both tranquility and destruction, much like the human experience. The red is a powerful symbol of the human toll of war and violence, urging us to take action and protect the fragility of our world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Alexej is a Ukrainian-German photographer with a background in IT and rocket engineering. His work captures the intricate beauty and fragility of the world. He’s won the Travel Photographer of the Year and Gold medals from the Prix de la Photographie (PX3) and Tokyo Photography Awards. His artwork has been exhibited worldwide.
Third Place: Hilda Champion, Germany, based in United States, Nights in Manhattan
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
“Nights in Manhattan, never reaching the end, and yes, I love you.” The mesmerizing towers of New York City’s skyline are abstracted and juxtaposed in black and white in this image. It is part of a series on New York towers, all presented in black and white.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Hilda Champion is a German/American fine art photographer born near Munich, Germany and has been living in Naples, Florida since 2001. Hilda shows her work globally in exhibitions and competitions and has received numerous international awards and accolades
Still Life
First Place: Verónica Garay, Chile, What was my grandmother’s kitchen.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Garay lives in her grandmother’s house and takes refuge in her memories of when she was a child. Among the natural shadows of these domestic territories, they give her the possibility to reflect on the dynamics of life in a home with an ancestral history, which once resisted the subordination of machismo, as well as to built wisdom for the welfare of others.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Veronica Garay is a photographer and graphic designer from Santiago de Chile. In her work, she explores the image as an intimate and collective territory, with the intention of an emotional encounter with the landscape, a body, and an experience that is possible to materialize from different visual languages and techniques.
Second Place: André Boto, Portugal, Red Slices
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
The foods we eat today are flooded with preservatives and chemical products to preserve, color, beautify, increase durability and make them withstand long journeys to their final destination of weeks or even months without their external appearance changing much. Do we know the true taste of the food we eat?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
André Boto is freelance photographer working in the following areas: commercial, product, architecture, interiors, and industrial as well as his own conceptual/creative projects. Main achievements include the European Professional Photographer of the Year 2010 and 2023, by FEP, and overall winner of the Creative Photo Awards 2022.
Third Place: Beth Galton, United States,
Back Alley Abortion
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This photograph investigates the consequences to women’s reproductive rights with the Supreme Court overturning of Roe vs Wade. Information for terminating pregnancies is now sought on social media and the web leaving women unsafe and alternative ways to determine what is right for their bodies and their lives.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Beth Galton is a photo-based artist, with an educational background in the natural sciences and three decades of experience as a professional photographer in the editorial and commercial arena. Beth lives and works in New York City, where she is moved and inspired by the city every day.
Conceptual
First Place: Katherine Dickson, United States, Destino
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This portrait showcases a woman from the Indigenous Taino Tribe, in a striking red garment as she leans against a large tub with a pulled plug-in hand. The vivid representation captures the essence of the scene of turbulent waves engulfing three 16th-century ships inside the container. Water spills, giving the appearance that the woman’s feet and the floor are slowly flooding with water.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Dickson is a true Renaissance woman, possessing a rare combination of talent, ambition, and perseverance. An empowered disabled artist, she is renowned for her craftsmanship in film, theatre-directing, singing, and writing. In 2010, she established Guapa Films, home to award-winning works from proficient directors. To showcase her creative prowess, she is creating exquisite portrait photographs and self-portrait pieces.
Second Place: Julia Wimmerlin, Ukraine,
Birth, from the “Fresco” series
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Fresco is a technique used in mural painting where the paint eventually becomes an integral part of the wall. It has been used since antiquity but became synonymous with Italian Renaissance. In fresco, water added to the dry pigment can turn the wall into the beginning of a new world. Water creates a new life, a new soul and a new woman.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Wimmerlin is a Ukrainian photographer currently living in Switzerland. She has degrees in economics and marketing, which helped launch an international marketing career, and has changed to photography in 2014. Mostly self-taught, she relies on her advertising experience when constructing an image, often producing a one-shot story. Her strength is creativity combined with true emotions.
Third Place: Liz Long, United States, Human Nature
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Taken in Long’s hometown, this image blends 2-D images with the natural world and reflects the bonds she has with specific places and moments in her childhood. There are bonds that are purposefully maintained, and then those that cling involuntarily, showing up as parts of a whole in a fever dream-like state.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Liz Long is a self-taught, award-winning photographer residing in Colorado. After working as an occupational therapist, she pivoted and began her photography career. She integrates her medical experience in many of her pieces, focusing primarily on conceptual photography. Her work boasts a minimalistic aesthetic while exploring weighty themes.
Plane/
Air Travel
First Place: Marcus Cederberg, Sweden, Moon from a plane, 2022
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This picture was taken on an overnight flight back home from Cederberg’s honeymoon in the Maldives, somewhere over the Indian Ocean. He like views framed by aircraft windows, as iit makes the picture more exciting and promising.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
We are all living in an era of endless distraction and constant input. Channeling a sense of calm, Marcus Cederberg translates society´s intrinsic need for a slower pace into minimalist photographs. His work has graced the walls of galleries around the globe and his Instagram has 175.000 followers.
Second Place: Dwain A. Vaughns, II, United States,
The Stall
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
This is the third photograph in Vaughns’ series: The Timeline. Proceeding it was Top of Climb, depicting the achievement of his childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot. The Stall is aptly named for the aviation term in which the wings no longer produce lift and an abrupt descent occurs. In 2016, Vaughns was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS/RSD) and was no longer able to fly airplanes, but as the series continues, he returns to flight.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
In each piece Vaughns shares his own personal story. He finds purpose in his work by harnessing the healing power of nature and being a voice for those with accessibility needs. “With my camera, I heal myself. Through my photographs, I pass that healing energy to you.”
Third Place: Sucharith Somayajula, United States,
Sunset Landing
IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Somayajula’s office is located across from one of the runways at the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta, Georgia. She is fascinated by the air traffic passing above him. On a sunny evening, after finishing work and equipped with her gear, she captured this moment.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Somayajula is an observer with a camera based in Atlanta, Georgia. She is drawn to the essence and magic of her immediate surroundings. Photography to her is exploring through a medium of expression. It’s not only to capture what’s going around her, but to have a strong connection to it by being in the moment.
