Photographic Centre Peri will be presenting the first Finnish exhibition of the newly crowned winners of the New York Photo Awards 2011 as part of the 2011 'European Capital of Culture' programme. Professional photographers and photography students from 72 different countries participated in the fourth international photography competition held by the New York Photo Festival, submitting a total of 19,000 photographs. A ten-person international jury selected 15 winners and honourable mentions for best single image and 15 winners and honourable mentions for best image series from the categories of editorial, advertising and fine art photography, which where announced at the Festival’s awards show on 13.5.2011. The premier award of the Festival, the Jury’s Choice Grand Prize, was given to the Polish photographer Rafal Milach.
Topical themes to emerge strongly from this year’s documentary image series include sexual identity, violence, human rights and equality as well as the growing inequalities in society. Many photographers explored these themes through portraits, for example the photographer Marcus Koppens’s (Germany, b. 1973) image series 'The Girl’s Got Balls!' featuring 'ladyboys', young transsexual prostitutes in Thailand; a series by Pietro Chelli (Italy, b. 1975) and Gabriele Galimberti (Italy, b. 1977) about female soldiers who are also victims of sexual violence in the US army, and Dom Smaz's (Switzerland, b. 1983) piece showing security guards and patrols at a middle-class residential compound in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A completely different picture of the modern reality of Brazil is given by the Spanish photographer Sebastian Listen (b. 1985) in his ‘Urban Quilombo’, a photo series of a former chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia which has become a vast slum.
Themes of identity reappear in the fine arts category, for example, in a photo series by Steven Becklyn (Canada) entitled 'Single Rooms', in which identity is investigated in relation to space, to a single room. ‘Brotherhood of Bears’, a series by Alan Charlesworth (US), captures the meetings of a subculture group within the gay community, while Claudia Caprotti (Italy) documents the physical and mental changes women undergo when expecting their first child in her series 'Born in 2010’.
The exhibition includes work by a further 23 photographers: Eamon Ward, Heinz Stephan Tesarek, Matt Gunther, Vincent Dixon, Adam Hinton, Claudio Meneghetti, Sarah Rhodes, Robert Rutoed, Luca Sage, Eric Johnson, Alberto Lizaralde, Sarah Jacobs, Amanda Boe, Christine Bachmann, Michael Marquette, John Offenbach, Simon Harsent, John Cyr, Shane Lavalette, Eliane Beeson & Francois Vaxleire, Annie Ling and Christopher Patrick Ernst.
The exhibition, now open to the public, has been curated by Photographic Centre Peri in cooperation with the New York Photo Festival and produced in cooperation with the Centre’s business partner, the print house Artproof.
The exhibition is also supplemented by a full programme of panel discussions, networking opportunities and Q&A sessions with the artists which will take place in the middle of August.
For further information, please contact:
Photographic Centre Peri / Merja Pylkkänen, tel. +358 44 078 0801, merja.pylkkanen@peri.fi
Press release in English and press photos: http://perienglish.viidakkorumpu.fi
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