Juror: Julia Dolan, The Minor White Curator of Photography, Portland Art Museum
[exhibition catalogue, 2013]

Judge's Forward:
People, places, and things. Photography is and should be that simple. I studied the history of photography for years and sometimes over-theorized the medium, occasionally losing sight of these building blocks. Eventually a wise mentor pointed out these straightforward but essential foundations. Without people, places, and things, the photographic image, which is knottily tied to reality (however we might interpret that term) and our visible world, does not exist. These days, whenever presented with new photographs, I begin with the people, the places, and the things. Strong photographs and the photographers who create them present these elements in ways that invite me to consider our world in a fresh and perhaps different way.

All curators have stylistic and subjective biases. It is our responsibility to acknowledge and move beyond these predispositions so that we don’t miss a critical point or a magical image. Many themes remain constant throughout photography’s trajectory, including the portrait, the landscape, the still life, and the abstraction, but expression of these subjects evolves over time, constantly requiring us to adjust our vision. An iPhone might create a visually perplexing image because its camera mechanics accidentally morph a straightforward scene into an otherworldly one. A photographer on the other side of the world can now transmit jpegs that illuminate daily life in a location long inaccessible to outsiders. Or perhaps an artist catches something out of the corner of his or her eye, sharing that unique vision with us and demonstrating how everything that occurs in the visible world, though seemingly concrete and indisputable, is subject to interpretation.

While moving through the almost 13,000 entries submitted to The Art of Photography Show, I sought out photographs representing a wide range of subjects and approaches landing on all parts of the emotional spectrum. I found photographs made in tiny studios and the expansive outdoors. I circled back to works that challenged me through subject matter and composition, as well as those that immediately struck me as delightful or touching. Surprisingly, reducing the group to 600 photographs was not particularly burdensome. Narrowing the selections from 600 to the final 200, however, was often painful.

Photographs tell small parts of larger stories with an immediacy unlike other art forms, and the many images submitted to the Show from around the world underscore this phenomenon. Hossein Fatemi’s outstanding portrait of a man who lost his leg to a landmine is straightforward, poignant, rich with meaning, and even surreal. It uses elements of the established language of photography—the professional studio’s background fabric sweep, the frontal pose—but adds the incongruous element of the potted plant. The prosthetic leg points to a violent and unpredictable world beyond the deep blue fabric, while the man it supports demonstrates the fierce determination needed to survive outside of this controlled space. Similarly powerful is Mark Esper’s portrait of an Iranian hunger striker. The string that physically and symbolically seals the man’s lips is an exquisite detail, quietly expresses pain and protest as well as beauty. Denis Gillingwater’s stark, pixelated photograph, though created recently, is surprisingly reminiscent of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s image from his window at Le Gras. Surely Niépce, who created the “first photograph” almost two hundred years ago, could not have foreseen the medium’s potential for the constant surveillance and evidence compilation now underway. And just what, exactly, is that liquid in Jason Olive’s sumptuous image, and where is it? Milk in a bowl? Paint in a can? Water in an ocean? I don’t care, I want to climb into the photograph and be enveloped. I want to be enveloped by all of these photographs.

This is why the range of photographs submitted to the show is enthralling. As I move from photograph to photograph I am reminded of my childhood one moment, of a seventeenth-century painting the next. I see that the world is a complicated and often painful place and then marvel at striking composition and color and design. I hope these images stir up similar—or completely unrelated—thoughts and feelings in you. This is photography. It is glorious. It is very simply and most magnificently made up of people, places, and things.    

[from the portfolio, Earths]