Thoughts On Photography Contests

Do photography contests make sense?

Playing with a Profoto B2 in “freeze mode”. I need a contest category of moving still-life, that looks like a black and white but is actually color with plexiglass and ice.

I’ll get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way; I’ve never been a fan of photography contests. Les wrote a piece last year regarding judging print contests. Since that time I’ve been mulling over the topic of print contests and more specifically why I’ve always felt uncomfortable with them. Clarifying that a bit, I don’t think many of them as implemented make a lot of sense. The less focused they are in terms of genre, format, and style the more they seem like a raffle to my own sensibilities. The selection of winners when comparing what looks to be an incoherent collection of images degrades into what any particular person appointed to decide likes the best. Worse, it turns into a committee compromise of what the group dislikes the least.

Yes, many photography contests have categories such as wildlife, landscape, street, portraits, etc. Some even subdivide that into other categories such as black and white, color, film, and digital. Even those don’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. When everything is sorted out and the winners are selected what does the audience see? Typically first, second, and third place of a bunch of genres, styles, and treatments with maybe a second batch in black and white. A giraffe, a horse, and a lizard displayed together and we can guess the horse is the first-place winner a large portion of the time.

My biggest question about most photography contests is who specifically is the contest for? The submitters? The winners? More importantly who exactly is the audience for the final selection of those winners. I suggest that just about all photographic contests would be far better, and more enjoyable, and serve all of those submitting their work if they didn’t have winners. Instead, I’d suggest they should be more curated exhibitions where there are editorial criteria set forth and a call for submissions.

A call for submissions with a specific editorial brief and purpose more like a gallery exhibition where the “judges” become an editorial team or curation committee whose goal it is to put together the best show. I think the results would be far more compelling for whatever audience might be interested, including the community of photographers that didn’t “win”. I would also suggest that any explicit feedback for submissions that were not selected would make more sense and be more valuable for submitters.

I’ll go so far as to say that the implicit feedback of viewing the final showing would be enjoyable and say more about the editorial team than the submitters. The audience including those photographers that were not selected in effect would be judging the curation of the show. What good would that be? How about a meaningful discussion on editorial and curatorial decisions made? I’d find that interesting, productive, educational, and far more enlightening than a pedantic discussion on the rule of thirds or other moot regurgitation of the silly attempt at reducing the photographic art down to some sort of objective criteria.

Please don’t take my personal proclivities as some overall condemnation of all photo contests, especially those that produce results that are well-defined and serve the intended community. I’m offering an alternative point of view for all of those that I’d like to see more of as the mechanics of a photo contest and an exhibition are similar to a juried exhibition with the latter potentially more interesting to a larger audience.

I’d love to hear this communities thoughts on this as I’ve been mulling how to bring elements of this kind of thing to the Paper Arts community and have a few ideas for all of us down the road.