The Center Awards: Editor's Choice Award 3rd Place Winner: Xan Padrón

The Center Awards: Editor’s Choice Award 3rd Place Winner: Xan Padrón by Aline SmithsonMay 24, 2019

©Xan Padrón, Time Lapse. Avenida Duarte, Santo Domingo

Congratulations to Xan Padrón, for his Third Place win in CENTER’S Editor’s Choice Award for his project, Time Lapse. The Choice Awards recognize outstanding photographers working in all processes and subject matter. Images can be singular or part of a series. Winners receive admission to Review Santa Fe portfolio reviews and participation in a winner’s exhibition at Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, IN.

Juror, MaryAnne Golon, Director of Photography, The Washington Post shares her insights:

The 2019 Editor’s Choice projects were as diverse and varied as the photography field itself. There are so many fantastic projects underway that I viewed during the judging process. I have a renewed faith in the future of our medium.

The Juror of the Editor’s Choice Award was MaryAnne Golon, Director of Photography, The Washington Post. She is a key member of the senior management team overseeing all aspects of photography across all platforms. She manages 17 staff photojournalists, 18 photography editors, and hires dozens of freelance photojournalists. Golon was previously Time magazine’s director of photography and co-managed the international newsmagazine’s photography department for more than 15 years. She was twice selected for American Photo magazine’s list of the 100 most important people in photography.

©Xan Padrón, Time Lapse. Beijing

Time Lapse

My interest has always been “capturing” the soul of a place through the people that happens to be there, trying to“portrait” a city exclusively through its regular “random” people, without showing streets, buildings, etc. I consider my works a kind of documentation of a city or a specific neighborhood. I’m fascinated about how much life happens even at the most remote corner of a city. My itinerant life takes me around the world on a constant basis and I walk around cities, finding a spot to sit for a couple of hours and, unnoticed, photograph random people passing by against a wall. These quotidian gestures, combined, create a unique narrative of life by a wall in a place in the world. Time Lapse: 1 place, 1 moment. This project is not about the pictures I take but about the life that emanates from a moment of obsevation; a moment of pause”. It’s an ongoing project that includes cities in Spain, USA, Dominican Republic, China, Italy, Portugal, Cuba, France, UK, Australia, New Zealand…

©Xan Padrón, Time Lapse. Calle Cristi, Trinidad, Cuba

Xan Padrón is a Galician photographer, musician and composer.

The son of an old-school journalist, Xan Padrón grew up used to be the silent observer who sees things quietly and finds stories everywhere. As a former profesional touring musician, traveling the world with his bass and his camera he was able to pursue his career as a photographer focused on the people around him.

Xan Padrón’s fascination with time and movement, coupled with an uncanny ability to disappear behind the lens, unnoticed by his subjects, brought him to the realization of how much life happens even at the most seemingly insignificant location of a city.

His work has been exhibited in the United Nations HQ NYC, Spain, Canada, Israel and the US. His portraits of artists have been published worldwide in newspapers, magazines, concert programs, posters and album covers. Xan Padrón is a resident of New York City where he lives and works with his wife: musician, composer, writer and educator Cristina Pato.