BJP's 2012 International Photography Award is open
Chloe Dewe Mathews won the 2011 International Photography Award (series category) for a project called Caspian, which included this shot of two sisters running down to the underground mosque in Beket-Ata, Kazakhstan. Image © Chloe Dewe Mathews/Panos Pictures.
You could win a framed, printed exhibition at London's Foto8 Gallery by entering BJP's 2012 International Photography Award
Author: Diane Smyth
20 Jun 2012 Tags: CompetitionIpa
What do Chloe Dewe Mathews, Edmund Clark and Peter di Campo have in common? They've all won London exhibitions in BJP's International Photography Award. Enter now and you could win a framed, printed show at Foto8 this November.
"There are so many competitions around that have long lists of winners, highly commended, shortlisted and so on, and over endless categories, so it felt great to be given a prize with only one winner [in two categories]," says Dewe Mathews, who won the series prize in 2011 with a project on life around the Caspian sea. "I was lucky to have the support of BJP, Spectrum and Foto8, all giving me advice and putting energy into creating and publicising the show.
"Having the show itself was a great opportunity to bring people to see the Caspian project in an immersive environment, printed beautifully and hanging in Foto8's new space. It was invaluable, considering most of the time people flick through your work for a matter of seconds on a website (while checking their Facebook and deciding what to have for dinner)."
Photographers may enter projects on any topic, and there are two categories to choose from: one awarding the best series of images, and the other the best single image. Both winners will be exhibited at Foto8 for two weeks and will be able to keep their print or prints after the show.
The IPA has been running since 2005, and previous winners include Edmund Clark, whose series Guantanamo: If the lights go out went on to be published by Dewi Lewis; and Peter di Campo, who won the series prize in 2010 with a project on Life Without Lights in Ghana. Facundo Arrizabalaga won the single image prize last year with a shot from the student protests of November 2010, and Walter Astrada picked up the single image award in 2008 with an image depicting a victim of matricide in Guatemala.
The IPA is judged by a rolling panel of photography experts, which last year included Alexia Singh, editor-in-charge of the Wider Image Desk at Thomson Reuters, and Monica Allende, picture editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. The prize is generously supported by Spectrum Photographic, one of the leading photography labs in Europe, and by Foto8 Gallery in East London.
The closing date this year is 15 September 2012. For more information, and to enter online, visit www.bjp-online.com/ipa.
Comments
I know the deadline for entries is mentioned in this article, but it might be worth adding it to the actual award entry pages, as beyond saying "Judging will take place after the deadline" there appears to be no mention of it there whatsoever, and presumably many people will follow links from elsewhere which take them directly to the entry pages, thereby bypassing this vital info.
Also, will the jurors be announced at some point soon? I ask because I'm a bit tired of entering my very definitely non-journalistic work into awards that claim to be open to all styles of photography, only to discover after the closing date that yet again it's a bunch of boring documentary or news-photography types doing the judging. I'm sure you can understand that, if this is the case, for those of us working in areas of photography other than reportage its a bit of a waste of our time and money entering.
My comment is not a complaint, but I share ungrateful moaner's concern that styles of photography other than documentary are unlikely to be selected for an award. I was about to submit a few single images of my photographic art when I noticed that all the images or series identified in the article as previous winners were of a documentary nature. Before I proceed to enter photographic art in the BJP 2012 IPA competition, I would like to know whether it has a real chance of being selected. Thank you.
I Agee with the above would it not be more democratic to represent or reflect different genres of photography within the competition...
Three different people all asking the same perfectly reasonable question and there's absolutely no reaction from the BJP, either here or on the award's website. Even just a short sentence saying something like "jurors will be announced nearer the deadline" would have satisfied me in the meantime. But after 2 months: nothing!
You're asking us to give you money but provide no information to help us decide if this investment might be worth our while.
My money stays in my pocket, thanks.
As 'documentary' (which these days is not 'reportage' or 'journalism') is the only specifically photographic genre (the others - Portrait, Landscape, Still Life, Nude - are historically derived from painting). I see no problem with the documentary slant. that's photography. But boring? I don't think so.
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