World Press Photo of the Year 2008

 

Anthony SUAU (USA) wins premier award 

The international jury of the 52nd annual World Press Photo Contest have selected a black-and-white image by American photographer Anthony Suau as World Press Photo of the Year 2008.

The picture shows an armed officer of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department moving through a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. Officers have to ensure that the house is clear of weapons, and that the residents have moved out. The winning photograph, taken in March 2008, is part of a story commissioned by Time magazine. The story as a whole won Second Prize in the Daily Life category of the contest.

Jury chair MaryAnne Golon said: "The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It's a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house following foreclosure. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages”.

Fellow juror Akinbode Akinbiyi commented: "It is a very ambiguous image. You have to go into it to find out what it is. Then all over the world people will be thinking ‘this is what is happening to all of us'."

Juror Ayperi Ecer said: "We have something here which visually is both clear and complex...It's not about issues - 2008 is the year of the end of a dominant economic system. We need a new language, to learn how to illustrate our lives."

The jury gave prizes in 10 theme categories to 62 photographers of 27 nationalities from: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, El Salvador, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and USA.

A total of 96,268 photographs were submitted to be judged, representing an increase of 19.5% since last year. The number of participants was also a record, a total of 5,508 photographers sent in their work, which is a rise of 9.7% compared to 2008.

The participants represent 124 different nationalities. Entries by photographers from Asia increased by 14% from last year, photographers from China and India leading the numbers, with 490 (2008: 400) and 208 (2008: 165) participants respectively. European photographers are traditionally strongly represented in the contest. This year there were significant increases in the number of photographers from certain countries, such as Italy with 306 (251) and Poland with 104 (81).

The members of the 2009 jury were:

Chair:
> MaryAnne Golon, USA, consulting photography editor

Members:
> Akinbode Akinbiyi, Nigeria, photographer, writer and curator
> Patrick Baz, France/Lebanon, regional photo-manager, the Middle East, Agence France-Presse
> Peter Bialobrzeski, Germany, photographer Laif
> Olivier Culmann, France, photographer Tendance Floue
> Erin Elder, Canada, digital media manager The Globe and Mail
> Per Folkver, Denmark, photo editor in chief Politiken
> David Friend, USA, editor of creative development Vanity Fair
> Ayperi Karabuda Ecer, Sweden/Turkey, vice president pictures Reuters
> Volker Lensch, Germany, head of photo department Stern
> Ricardo Mazalan, Argentina, photographer The Associated Press
> Arianna Rinaldo, Italy, photo editor D La Repubblica delle Donne and editor-in-chief OjodePez
>Sujong Song, South Korea, freelance photo editor

Secretaries:
> Daphné Anglès, France/USA, European picture coordinator The New York Times
> Stephen Mayes, UK, managing director VII Photo Agency

Anthony SUAU, USA, for Time

Anthony Suau, the author of the World Press Photo of the Year 2008, will receive his award during an awards ceremony in Amsterdam on Sunday 3 May 2009. The award also carries a cash prize of 10,000 euro. In addition, Canon will donate Anthony Suau a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera.

 

The awards ceremony is preceded by a three-day program of lectures, discussions and screenings of photography. The exhibition of prizewinners will be shown at the Oude Kerk from 4 May to 28 June and will subsequently visit over 100 locations around the world. For a provisional exhibition schedule see: www.worldpressphoto.org/exhibitions.

 

World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon and TNT.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Hasselblad Award in Photography 2001

Hiroshi Sugimoto receives the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography 2001

The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation has selected Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto as the winner of the 2001 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The prize, consisting of SEK 500,000 and a gold medal, will be awarded at a ceremony held in Göteborg, Sweden on October 20, 2001. A new exhibition of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work, curated and organized by the Hasselblad Center, will be opened in conjunction with the ceremony.

The Foundation’s decision to award the 2001 prize to Hiroshi Sugimoto was motivated with the following statement:

“Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of the most respected photographers of our time. In his main photographic themes - the interrelated disciplines of Art, History, Science and Religion - Sugimoto combines Eastern meditative ideas with Western cultural motifs. In the past 25 years Sugimoto has reached audiences around the world with his distinctive, carefully composed series in black and white. Inspired by Renaissance paintings and early 19th century photography, and using a large format camera, Sugimoto achieves a wide range of tones in a body of work that reflects his great love of detail, his outstanding technical mastery and - above all - his fascination with the paradoxes of time”.

The Jury for the 2001 Award, which submitted the proposal to the Board of Directors of the Foundation, consisted of: Mr. Hasse Persson, (chairman) photographer, Hyssna, Sweden, Mr. Régis Durand, curator, Paris, France, Professor Tuija Lindström, Göteborg, Sweden, Mr. Shimizu Toshio, curator, Tokyo, Japan and Ms. Hripsimé Visser, curator, Amsterdam, Holland.

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. He received his education at St. Paul’s University in Tokyo. In 1970 he left Japan to study photography at the Art Center of Design in Los Angeles, California. This was at a time when Minimalism and Conceptual Art - both of which influenced Sugimoto's work - reigned. As his own technique developed, Hiroshi Sugimoto came to conceive of subjects in such conceptual depth that they have continued to merit his attention ever since. Taking photographs for his Dioramas, since 1976, in a number of natural history museums, Sugimoto has concentrated on illusionistic three-dimensional displays, designed for the benefit of children and adults - to bring life to the evolutionary years.

For the Theaters (begun in 1978) Hiroshi Sugimoto spent several months in American movie houses built in the 1920s and the 1930s as well as in the drive-in theaters that opened later. Keeping the shutter of his camera open throughout the whole movie Sugimoto at the same time recorded both the screens and the architectural surroundings. The resulting photographs show the screen as a bright, white gateway to infinity.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s third focus of interest has been his Seascapes, dating from 1980 and onwards. In photograph after photograph Sugimoto has captured seascapes all over the world. Whether photographing the Caribbean, the Baltic Sea or the Dead Sea the horizon line precisely bisects the image, dividing two basic elements - water and air - into two optically equal but not identical halves.

In his seascapes Hiroshi Sugimoto creates images of great spiritual value. His photographs of the sea show a time existing beyond our own sense of time. The sealine has not changed for millions of years. What we see today in photographs is the same view our forefathers saw millions of years ago - and coming generations will see thousands of years from now.

As mentioned in the Foundation’s citation, Sugimoto has been able to communicate his imagery to audiences all over the world. His photographs of famous people in the Wax museum 1 and 2-series, that Sugimoto began in 1976 are, of course, easy to relate to from a Western standpoint. Here he travels between centuries, photographing Napoleon Bonaparte on his deathbed (1821) and Sophia Loren in a 1960s movie in super-realistic scenes that look particularly lifelike in Sugimoto’s black and white photographs.

In his Architecture-series, begun in 1997, Sugimoto re-interprets eminently familiar buildings, subverting his signature of clarity, deliberately blurring the images to create a different kind of precision. Out of the fog, the buildings rise like beautiful objects occupying the landscape. The blur slows time down and evokes the more subtle nature of architecture. It seems as if the photographer has gone backwards in time to recreate the visionary stages of these world-famous architectural masterpieces.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s latest series, Portraits, from 1999, presents life-size photographs of mostly historical personalities - Henry VIII and each of his wives, Benjamin Franklin, Vladimir Lenin, Sir Winston Churchill, Emperor Hirohito and recent political figures such as Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro - photographed in wax museums. They are all isolated against a black background and dramatically lit, creating hauntingly beautiful images. The series which also includes a 25-foot photograph of a wax version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, emulates the grand tradition of portraiture and recalls the wax figures’ sources in famous paintings by David, Van Dyck, Vermeer and others.

Time is what fascinates Hiroshi Sugimoto the most, and Time Exposed (Thames and Hudson, 1995) is also the name of his first book. His most recent book, Portraits, was published in 2000 by the Guggenheim Museum.

Hiroshi Sugimoto travels most of the year looking for new motifs for his ongoing series of photographs. When he is not on the road, he shares his time between New York and Tokyo.

ERNA AND VICTOR HASSELBLAD FOUNDATION
Ekmansgatan 8, SE-412 56 Göteborg, Sweden
www.hasselbladfoundation.org