PROJECT LAUNCH : juror statement

JUROR VIRGINIA HECKERT, Associate Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum

It has been a pleasure and honor to serve as the juror for Project Launch, with its abundance of worthy submissions seeking support towards the completion of the projects presented. It is not an easy task to review several hundred submissions, taking into consideration not just the images, but the statements as well. What struck me was the great number of projects that use photography to describe a sense of place and the range of motivations that inspire these efforts - documentation, reform, personal exploration, etc. The most successful submissions demonstrated a degree of nuance or sophistication that derives from a deep engagement with the subject. Whether presenting themes that are geographically specific or personally meaningful, all twenty of the submissions that advanced to the final round are infused with a sensibility that enables them to achieve a universal relevance, while also rewarding the viewer with a sense of discovery in the process. Selecting a final winning project was particularly challenging.

First place: I kept returning to Odette England's Thrice Upon a Time for the story it tells about the loss of a family farm, and Ms. England's poignant effort to reclaim that loss by engaging her parents in the performative act of attaching negatives of the farm that she had taken previously to the soles of their shoes as they return to the site on a regular basis and walk the land that they once owned. The images derived from the battered and frayed negatives make tangible the anguish and grief the photographer wishes to convey.

Honorable Mention: There is something immediately familiar about the sites that Yiorgos Kordakis has photographed for his 10,000 American Movies project, a familiarity that is at once distanced because, like Mr. Kordakis before embarking on his project, most of us "know" these sites only through the vicarious experience of seeing them in movies. His use of instant Polaroid film reinforces this dichotomy of immediacy and distance, introducing the element of time to that of place.

Honorable Mention: Donna Wan's In the Landscape project successfully borrows a tradition from landscape painting, that of 19th-century Romantic painters' introduction of a figure seen from behind to lead the viewer into the scene, to depict a wide range of vacation and leisure destinations. Elevated vantage points and less-than-ideal lighting conditions introduce distancing elements that underscore the investigative nature of her observation of individuals interacting with the landscape.

Congratulations to the winners and to all who participated in Project Launch.