Melissa Campbell

University of Brighton - MA Photography

Selector's Comment: In 'Still Life' Melissa Campbell explores the history of her 50 year-old car, through images that examine collective memory and the family archive. The personal history of a mechanical object such as this offers up intriguing possibilities, not least the way in which the ten previous owners can, in effect, be considered as an extended family. For many people their car is almost a family member and its relationship to personal experience and family history is inevitably a powerful force. I've seen many projects that look at the family home, for example, but never the family car, and so I found my imagination captured immediately. However, balancing contemporary and archival remains the challenge, as does the extensive detective work required.

Max Bwire

University of Westminster - MA Photographic Studies

Selector's Comment: I found this to be a particularly interesting series of portraits. No faces, no bodies, just photographs of people's shoes. The series is approached almost as a typology but there is also a sense of the environmental portrait. The shoes are photographed against the background of a door (presumably in the house of the owners), providing clues to the world that the owners inhabit. Added to this is the placement of the shoes, which sometimes adopt almost a gestural stance, a choice we assume is made by their owners.

Cinzia D'Ambrosi

London College of Communication - MA Photojournalism and
Documentary Photography (Part-time/Online mode)

Selector's Comment: Homelessness is never an easy subject to photograph. It's been covered so many times and there is always a difficult and delicate balance needed to ensure that those photographed are not simply viewed as victims. Cinzia has focused on those in temporary accommodation, in hostels, B&B and temporary flats - the hidden homeless. In a selection of only five images it is never really possible to tell a story and inevitably the strength of the final series will lie in how broadly the project has been approached. With a project such as this, accompanying text is always critical as it can offer up a much deeper understanding of people's circumstances.

Phil Le Gal

London College of Communication - MA Photojournalism and
Documentary Photography (Part-time/Online mode)

Selector's Comment: It seems that there are always new stories to tell through photography. Alphaville, as described by Phil Le Gall, is totally new to me and the idea that with the building of a shoe factory in the 1930s an Essex county town could become the Promised Land for a few hundred Czechoslovakian employees and their families seems extraordinary. And even more so that the Estate that they were housed in was built to mirror the design and scale of the Czechoslovakian model town of Zlín. Le Gal incorporates landscape, portraiture and archive imagery in a effective combination that promises to be an insightful story of the working lives of early 20th economic immigrants and their descendants.

Simon Burch

University of Ulster - MFA Photography

Selector's Comment: Simon Burch disrupts the way in which landscape is normally used. All his images are taken through glass, whether through windscreens or through windows. Consequently there is a secondary frame within the photographic frame and this powerfully emphasises the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. Photographed in an area of the south-western USA where agribusiness dominates, the external landscapes themselves offer up a bleakness that suggests a natural world bleached of its character.

Kenneth O'Halloran

University of Ulster - MFA Photography

Selector's Comment: O'Halloran reflects on relics of a once vibrant element within Irish life. The abandoned structures that he portrays were once thriving open-air theatres, familiar meeting points where people played games on summer evenings, whilst others gathered just to meet and talk. Confronting these ruined building front on, O'Halloran records them in a straightforward and immediate way; powerful images which draw us in. They suggest a history that we can not fully comprehend, yet I found myself imagining their previous existence, active social hubs within their communities.