A total of 30 entries were submitted to the Seeing in Green photography competition, and displayed as part of Westbury-on-Trym’s Community Fair on 9th May 2015. The junior and youth categories were merged to form one young people category of under-18s, in which there were two winners: Annie Clough-Hillman’s unmanipulated print of a view through a window, and Edward Smith’s digitally-created circular composition. Both images concentrate the eye in a layered process of looking: Annie’s framing segments the view of house and garden with precision, while nevertheless softening the exterior/interior boundary across the sunlit glass. Her image is atmospheric, quiet and pays attention to the mark-making process of light’s action on a surface. Edward’s centrifugal collage has a intriguing balance of image references, which alternate between the softness of a green leaf/surrounding trees and the hardness of metal/turbine sculpture. The suggestion of movement brings a dynamic life to the image.
In the adult category, Simon Smith’s similarly centrifugal composition of a magnolia flower wins the unmanipulated print category. The magnolia stands out like a beacon in a sea of concentrated blur, a brilliant technical accomplishment with a zoom lens, but also a singularly iconic choice of imagery. The blossom has all the clean, bright beauty of spring, which is focussed so that we might see it more clearly in the midst of the whirling world. Of the smaller selection of digitally created entries, Christopher Richards wins with his entry of Bristol bicycles. A suggestion of bicycle overload is created with the mass of wheels, frames and metal all pushing up against a bank of green – the parked up transport visually has nowhere to go, despite Bristol’s efforts to promote cycling, this seems an apt depiction.
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who took part, and to the prize-givers (Photographique, Lee Spencer-Fleet, and ICVL).
Header image: Entry banner, design and photograph by Sheona Beaumont.
Pingback: Will artists have patrons in heaven? « Arts Mentoring Group