This year we have changed our former Photobooks and Panels competitions from strictly regulated inputs, which ensured a Like to Like comparison competitive environment, into a Sequences competition with a much more open format. The idea is to encourage ‘out of the box’ creativity, innovation and technique ‘stretching’ for club members.
The competition was in three formats, Photobooks, Panels and AV. It sounds similar to the previous year, but the ‘rules’ were very different.
In essence:
For Photobooks all format restrictions were removed. As a result there were books without pages, folded/ folding books and conventional books of varying sizes.
For Panels the only restriction is that the display should fit on no more than two levels of our ‘A’ frame display system. In effect entrants had up to two shelves or a space that was up to 2m long and 1.5 m tall to fill as they wished.
For AV entrants supplied a file that was either a self running PowerPoint or a standard MP4 file of no more than five minutes duration with or without a sound track.
There were six entries in each class.
Our judge, Andrew Mills, really understood what we were trying to do and was very complementary about the entries.
In the course of the Photo books, Panels and AV Competition, our judge Andrew Mills mentioned several photographers. He has sent details in the following message:
The photographers I mentioned:
Heather Angel – wildlife (I couldn’t find any reference to her commercial work from the 1980s and 90s) https://20k.1f5.myftpupload.com/
Irving Penn – Flowers (and much more – view his galleries: irvingpenn.org – he was one of my biggest influences whan I was a student in the late 1960s)
Imogen Cunningham – Flowers (1910-1920) https://www.artnet.com/artists/imogen-cunningham/
Herman Leonard – Jazz (1930- 1940) https://hermanleonard.com/index.php/gallery/1/1/20/Print
Antony Cecil-Wright (artist) https://selfimplied.co.uk/gallery/abstract/
Panel Entries
The photos are not the original exhibits, but a snapshot taken at the event. The hall lighting caused some issues with reflections.
Highly Commended
Celia Henderson
‘Plants from an Autumn Garden’
Martin Tomes
‘Past its Best’
“Decaying flowers sometimes happen in our house. I thought that these tulips looked interesting so I dug out my light tent and flash guns and made these.”
Bob Broglia
‘The Hideaway’
David Hastings
‘Portrait of a Mandarin Duck’
Janet Brown
‘Amberley Road Allotments’
Rob Kuhner
‘Sydney Opera House’
Photobook Entries
Highly Commended
Janet Brown
‘On Reading’
Bill Brooks
Audio Visual Entries
Highly Commended
Mr Worms
For quite a while now, I have been fascinated by the idea of multiple exposure photography; that is, multiple photos of a subject, taken from slightly different angles and superimposed on top of each other. This project approaches that concept from a contrary perspective: here there is only one image, overlayed upon itself multiple times, and instead of the camera moving around the subject, it is the photograph itself that is in motion.
This change of interpretation effectively results in a photographic kaleidoscope.
The name of the project, ‘Phantasmagoria’, was inspired by the many ephemeral creatures and macabre faces that emerge from the swirling interactions of the superimposed layers.
Martin Tomes