source

GRADUATE
PHOTOGRAPHY
ONLINE 2020

Each year as part of Graduate Photography Online we ask a number of professionals from the world of photography to review all the BA work submitted and choose their favourites. We hope this makes an interesting introduction to the project as a whole.

Brenda Fitzsimons

Picture Editor, The Irish Times

www.irishtimes.com

Looking at these submissions mid Covid 19 lockdown there was a welcome sense of different worlds appearing before me – an energising feeling. The work that I found myself most drawn to had a strong, usually instant, emotional appeal, which on closer inspection revealed a solid skill base and technical know how. The six I chose were images I would be happy to spend time with – creative pictures that I know would continue to engage and stimulate. Submissions of this nature require the photographer to be their own curator – a challenge for all photographers no matter how experienced – and I was pleased to see that most submissions reflected a coherent vision from this year’s BA photography graduates, a narrative fully engaged in its creative response to the category brief.

Selected Photographers:

Emanuele Centi

Selector's Comment: The duplicity of light in these images contradicts yet informs and envelopes the subject uniquely. Each subject is patiently observed and the intimacy and restraint reward while the balanced proportions invite and seduce. The light is protective and not intrusive or compromising, it is not flattering in the traditional sense but effectively transcendent. Each portrait is strong, balanced and uniquely composed to serve the picture which in turn serves the subject. Nice work.

Jordan Mossom

Selector's Comment: I was drawn to the compelling subject matter and affords the viewer an intimate view of humanity. Jordon Mosson’s reportage-style approach to his subject is deftly and respectfully handled, he focused on the relationships and trust in a therapeutic setting without feeling intrusive or overly sentimental. He brings the viewer into his subject’s experience and maintains high quality technical standards in these powerful images.

Lucy Kane

Selector's Comment: These constructed nude images are subtle, clean and restrained. Beautifully designed and intimately observed yet in no way intrusive or titillating. The fragmentation of the human form, ambiguous edges melding and twisting into each other seamlessly defying the corruption. A successful challenge to tradition and I look forward to what this artist chooses to explore in the future.

Meg Jackson

Selector's Comment: Meg Jackson is ready for prime time. Her portfolio of photographs is technically well executed and thematically consistent and has a uniquely clear point of view. The narrative quality is expressed in the choice of colour, models, character of light, design, layout and composition. I was especially impressed with her broad aesthetic vocabulary in terms of movement, and the marriage of product and her aesthetically cinematic style and playfulness.

Rachel Andrew

Selector's Comment: The subtleness of tones and the restrained use of colour and line in these intimately quiet works is what initially drew my eye. There is an escapist lightness to these transforming surfaces and edges - disrupting the photographic surface and contorting the two dimensions until it is unredeemable. A kind of metamorphosis is revealed, a birth and development realised through the layering of ideas and a controlled destruction of each Polaroid. The chemically fragile and limited viability of these twisted Polaroid photographs defy the cropped views of migrating flocks seemingly effortlessly flying in tandem.

Tom Walsh

Selector's Comment: When the familiar transcends and succeeds in raising the bar. In these eerie almost apocalyptic images Tom Walsh finds the beauty and a surrealistic narrative of the battle for the planet. He fills every inch of the frame with engaging tonality and perspective. His multi-layered compositions reference history, ephemera, and juxtapose an ominous atmospheric toxicity with childlike playfulness that distracts the devastating consequences of greed.

Selection by Rebecca McClelland ▸
Creative Director & Curator, Ian Parry Scholarship

Selection by Nicola Shipley ▸
Director, GRAIN Projects, Birmingham.

View Submission Guidelines  ▸