The stated aim of the Syngenta
Photography Award is to draw attention to and stimulate dialogue around key
global challenges, such as food security. The first competition, held in 2013,
took as its theme the tensions between urban and rural environments. This, the
second competition, took on the twin themes of scarcity of resources such as
land, food and water and the damage to the environment caused by the waste that
we generate. The professional competition invited photographers to submit a
themed portfolio of images, together with a proposal for a further project (to
be funded for the winner by Syngenta to the tune of $25,000) related to the
theme. The Open competition invited individual submissions from any
photographer. With hefty prizes of up to $15,000, the competitions attracted
more than 2,000 entries from around the world.
The professional competition was
essentially aimed at photojournalists, with those interested in environmental
issues starting with a clear advantage. The winner, Mustafah Abdulaziz,
produced a portfolio of images (including Image
1, which shows women in Pakistan working together to draw brackish water
from a well) on the scarcity of water. The importance of the subject matter is
abundantly clear, although this could hardly be described as the sexiest
subject in the world. Abdulaziz managed to produce aesthetically pleasing
images that showed empathy with people across two continents whom he shadowed,
without diminishing the importance of his subject matter.
Image 1; Mustafah Abdulaziz
Other topics predictably included
environmental pollution (aka smog) in China, huge landfill sites and piles of
tyres and electrical waste. Even Greenland is not immune from abandoned waste,
as Camille Michel’s photograph (Image 2)
demonstrates. All these subjects allowed the photographers to present the
subject matter in a visually appealing manner, even if the ethereal beauty of
the dim shapes of Chinese city buildings almost hidden by smog is of little
consolation to those who have to live and work there. The success of the
winning portfolios was presumably dependent on their ability to engage with and
provoke empathy (rather than apathy!) from the judges, so human subjects were
very much to the fore. Bénédicte
Desrus’ highly commended images of obese people in Mexico and the USA were a
good example of this. On the other hand Marcus Doyle’s soft palette Californian
beach sunset, with abandoned chair and other beach detritus carefully
positioned in the foreground, was outstanding in my personal “beauty in waste”
category.
Image 2 (Camille Michel)
Throughout the exhibition, statements placed on walls rammed home the message that, unless something
changes, the planet is heading for disaster…….and it’s all because of how we
live our lives. One example: “four billion trees are cut down each year around
the world and paper recycling only accounts for 43% of all paper used”. I
suspect that the organisers are preaching to the converted but, with nature and
the environment lagging well behind the main issues taxing the minds of our
politicians, journalists and electorate in the run up to the (May 2015) UK
general election, the point is well worth making yet again. Furthermore, in the
final section (“shaping our future”), some possible solutions to the planet’s
problems are represented, with Jamey Stillings’ monochrome images of huge,
desert-sited solar arrays standing out.
Several international photo-journalists have risen to the
challenge of producing engaging and aesthetically pleasing photographic
portfolios featuring what, on the face of it, are rather dry topics. I found
the exhibition fascinating and rewarding. The empathy that the portfolios show
for their subject matter was one reason for their success and is a learning
point that I can take for my own portfolio work, now and in the future. The
ability of some of the finalists to make even the driest subject matter
visually appealing is another key learning point. Whilst some of the individual
images in the “open” competition held even more aesthetic appeal it was the ways in which the portfolios in the professional competition had been constructed that proved to
be of more value to me.
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