Breaking down walls

Recently a message was received from Rick Shaw with an invitation.
Rick is the director of the “Pictures of the Year International POYi” from Missouri, USA.
He invited to participate this year in their competition.

Professional photographers working in documentary and news photography can send in their recent work.
A jury of experts consisting of professional photographers and photo-editors choose who has excellence.

This is not the only important competition there is in this field.
Probably more important is the competition called “World Press Photo” that is organized out of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The career as an autonomous artist-photographer is now spanning almost 40 years.
And never any photography competition was entered.
There were several reasons for this strategic decision.
One is that everything depends of a jury of just a few people.
Who see a lot of photography in a very short time.
And one may wonder in how far excellence can be recognised in those hard circumstances.
Besides the question in how far the jury member is actually capable to see high quality.

Another reason is that competitions like “Pictures of the Year International POYi” and “World Press Photo” have many winners.
There are multiple categories and even special awards.
In the end there are maybe a hundred laureates and what public relations benefit brings that to be one of them?

Third reason is that participating in a competition may result in not winning.
And that does not fit in the mental structure.
Winning is the only option and therefore competition is excluded.
As is the lottery.

Fourth reason is that the work of this photographer is unconventional.
Concerning choice of subject and way of presentation.
Most likely even the jury members will have never seen photo-projects like “The most beautiful people in the world”.
And what is not common, is easily put aside as irrelevant.

The usual choice of subjects for winning photography at competitions like “Pictures of the Year International POYi” and “World Press Photo” is people in misery.
Showing suffering, disasters, catastrophes and calamities.
The presentation of all this negativity is the tradition.
Almost never photography wins that has a positive message.

Another doctrine and dogma is that everything to be seen is in one image or in a group of images.
“The most beautiful people in the world” has, to the contrary, a very conceptual way of presentation.
One image consisting of three pictures put horizontally next to each other and underneath a vital text.
This way of presentation and the fact that the message is extremely positive makes a photo project like “The most beautiful people in the world” not a potentially very successful entry for a photo competition.

The fact is that a competition like “World Press Photo” even doesn’t accept a photo-project like “The most beautiful people in the world” as an entry.
Because of its different format.

In this matter “Pictures of the Year International POYi” from Missouri, USA is more progressive.
They have a category called the “Documentary Project of the Year".
A photographer enters the competition, what costs $ 50, by sending in the link to the website where the documentary project can be seen.
The jury members, so is told, visit the website, see the results of the documentary project and make up their minds.

That sounds like a good option.

If allergic to doctrine and dogmas, this should also be applied to the own policies.
Is it not?

When there is a personal invitation, although probably send out to hundreds of photographers, and when there is now a category that fits a recent photo project like “The most beautiful people in the world”, why not enter the competition of “Pictures of the Year International POYi”?

Breaking down the walls, “The most beautiful people in the world” will be submitted.
The price winners will be known in March 2009.

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To learn more about "Pictures of the Year International POYi”, click on:
www.poyi.org

To learn more about "World Press Photo", click on:
www.worldpressphoto.org/






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