Show Your Stuff in the Lone Star State: Enter the Texas Photographic Society's Annual International Student Contest

This fall, the Texas Photographic Society (TPS) is offering a valuable opportunity to aspiring photographers everywhere, with a chance to be published in an exhibition catalog and included in a group show in San Antonio, TX.

Open to photography students of all ages and across all areas of the medium, renowned photojournalist Lucian Perkins is the juror for this year’s competition. As a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, former Washington Post staff photographer and winner of the 1996 World Press Photo of the Year for his portrait from war-torn Chechnya, Perkins has both an impressive resume and a discerning eye.

Perkins is known for an approach that juxtaposes a deep sense compassion for his subjects with an instinctive ability to reveal a person’s hopes and foibles, in a style that combines formal clarity with an offbeat humor. Currently, he is working as an independent photographer and videographer concentrating on multimedia projects and video documentaries while still pursuing his love for the still image.

“As a photojournalist/documentary photographer what interests me most about photography is its unique ability to freeze a moment in time and reveal something within that instance, be it a 500th or even two seconds. When you document humanity, that moment can unveil emotions that exist within all of us,” Perkins explains in the contest’s juror’s statement.

To submit your images for consideration, simply download the application form here and follow instructions for contest rules and image format. Deadline for entries is October 26 and winners will be announced on the TPS website on November 30. Winning entrants will have their work exhibited at Semmes Gallery at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio in spring 2010. A color exhibition catalogue will be sent to all entrants and exhibiting photographers will receive 3 copies each.

Founded in 1985, TPS is a nonprofit organization comprised of approximately 1,4000 amateur and professional photographers, hailing from 49 states. Committed to the advancement of contemporary photography as a vehicle for creative expression and cultural understanding, TPS centers on furthering the educational and artistic development of its members while involving the community by subsidizing local exhibitions, publications, workshops and outreach.

So, start searching through past work or come up with some new and compelling images and submit to this call today! 

Identity Identities (i/i): Perspectives on Identity in the Twenty-First Century

 

For those spending their summer vacation looking for culture on the streets of New York City, a group exhibition that recently opened in Chelsea holds a store of thought-provoking images centered on the shifting identities and role-playing apparent in twenty-first century life. Identity Identities (i/i), a photography exhibit concentrating on the evolution of identity in an ever-changing society, is on view at the Aperture Gallery until August 20.

The works on view are assembled from eleven alumni of the School of Visual Art’s photography BFA program. SVA and the Aperture Foundation have partnered to present this selection from these promising artists. Making this exhibit even more unique, it has traveled to New York after a debut at the Galleria San Ludovico in Parma, Italy, where it was originally coordinated as an exchange between photography students in Parma and the students of SVA.

Each artist was selected for his or her unique approach to the theme of identity, creating a very diverse and exciting exhibition. Stephen Frailey, curator for (i/i) explains, “I wanted as broad an aesthetic and ideological range as possible.”

Two artists’ works stand out in particular: that of Susanne Persson and Hugo Fernandez.  Persson’s concentration was on product and corporate identity specifically through the use of logos and branding.  Fernandez focused on a dark and guarded perspective of sexual identity.  Other graduates chose to concentrate on how identity manifests itself through group identification and how the places people live affect them. 

“I would like the audience to be enlivened by the playfulness and originality of much of the work, and understand also that self identity is key, no matter what the genre, to creating a meaningful body of work,” comments Frailey.

The Aperture Gallery on West 27^th Street will host this exceptional international exhibit until August 20. These creative perspectives on a never-ending challenge we each face is not to be missed. It may spark a change in how you look at your own life. For more information on the exhibit, please visit this link.

--Susan Guth, PDN intern