The International Photography Awards 2016 exhibition will be showing from the 25th February to the 12th March 2016 at London’s TJ Boulting gallery.
Juno Calypso won the Series Award for Joyce, a collection of performative self-portraits that reflect on “modern rituals of seduction and the laboured construction of femininity.”
The 26-year-old graduate of London College of Communication was chosen from over 1,500 entrants by a judging panel including The Guardian’s photography critic Sean O’Hagan, Self Publish, Be Happy founder Bruno Ceschel, TJ Boulting’s Hannah Watson and BJP’s Executive Editor Diane Smyth.
As a photography student, Calypso spent her loan to fly to “the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania,” alone, to picture herself in the state’s honeymoon hotels.
“I began staging these photographs three years ago, using my grandma’s bedroom as the set, or a room found on Airbnb,” Juno tells BJP. “The idea always starts with the location – finding somewhere with a time-warp feel. This year I went to stay alone at a couple’s honeymoon resort in the US to continue the project. So it begins with an appreciation of 1960s pink decor, but also ends up as an awkward social encounter. I like to explore those feelings – seduction, solitude, desire, disappointment.”
“Juno Calypso’s work is representative of a new generation of female artists that are refreshing the long tradition of self-portraiture,” says Self Publish, Be Happy’s Bruno Ceschel. “And in doing so, she challenges, amuses, pleases and ultimately confuses us.”
“Juno’s photography has a very original identity; visually it is surreal and seductive,” Hannah Watson said of the winning series. “Although she only graduated recently, she already has a unique voice in photography. I can’t wait to see how she will exhibit this work in a gallery context.”
“For me, Juno was trying to do something different, and more ambitious, than other entries,” says BJP’s Diane Smyth. “A shot of a green lady in a pink bath is attention-grabbing, but her underlying thinking on femininity and its performance intrigued me. I’m excited to see how the show will come together.”
Felicity Hammond was awarded the Single Image Award for Restore to Factory Settings, a large scale photographic collage C-type print.
Hammond’s image explores economic and social evolutions in London; a cityscape once defined by factories and industrial structures, now given over to the incredible demand for residential and office spaces.
“In this work, the urban landscape has been dismembered, whilst at the same time it has gone through a process of careful reconstruction,” Hammond says. “The image explores the interplay between the past and the present. By engaging in the complexity of restoration, I’m exploring what I think are dystopian visions.”
The Royal College of Art graduate has previously been a finalist for the Catlin Art prize and Saatchi New Sensations. “Hammond’s marrying of concept and technique distinguished her from the rest,” says Tate Modern’s Emma Lewis.
“We were interested in how she is working with a historical technique (cyanotype) but with a very contemporary sensibility in terms of thinking about the sculptural in photography (both in the content of the image and how the work physically occupies the space),” Lewis says. “This is a completely fresh approach to the traditional subject of the British post-industrial landscape.”
This year marks the 10th edition of the prize, which has previously been won by the likes of Chloe Dewe Mathews, Dominic Hawgood, Giulio di Sturco and Edmund Clark.
The deadline for applications for the 2019 edition of BJP International Photography Award is 20 December 2018 – 4pm GMT. Apply now!