Film Photo Award Finalists and Standouts
©Odette England: Providence, Rhode Island, USA, VISIONARY PROJECT AWARD FINALIST
Once again, the applicants and proposals submitted to the Spring 2021 Film Photo Award were nothing short of awe-inspiring. Every single proposal was thoughtful, nuanced, deeply felt and delivered, making the jurying exceedingly difficult. This notable consistency has proved to be the norm for applicants to the Film Photo Award, and is undoubtedly a reflection of the correlation between the medium of film photography and the intensity of care and passion that goes into every aspect of the practitioner’s work and research. There is an undeniable need for this medium, not simply a desire. The Film Photo Award strives to support photographers who need to create with this material and celebrate the work being made with it in the 21st century.
The Spring 2021 jurors, Paddy Johnson of Art F City, previous Film Photo Award recipient Jon Henry, and myself (Film Photo Award founder), deliberated multiple times over three rounds of jurying to ultimately select the three recipients of the film grant for this cycle. Those recipients are featured on the Film Photo Award website and Instagram, and were featured here on Lenscratch over the past three days. Today, we want to give a heart-felt shout out to our Finalists who particularly made these decisions very difficult, as well as some additional applicants who also caught our attention and are deserving of recognition. Granted, you won’t be able to read their deeply thoughtful proposals or see the breadth of their submitted series of images, but I hope the images presented below will illustrate, as examples, the quality of the work the film photography community is engaged in right now. I find it so incredibly inspiring and feel very fortunate to be a part of such a kindhearted, considerate, and curious community. Please make sure to visit their websites, linked to their names, to see more of their important work.
Bravo everyone.
All my best,
PS: It is also important to note that this program would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. They truly believe in the efforts and practice of film photographers and want to see you succeed. Thank you Griffin Editions, Houck Medford, Kodak Professional, and Standard Cameras . And thank you Aline Smithson & Lenscratch for helping to promote all this fantastic, creative work.
The Film Photo Award is open to all emerging, established, and student photographers worldwide. Each award period provides three distinct grants of Kodak Professional Film and complimentary film processing by Griffin Editions to photographers who demonstrate a serious commitment to the field and are motivated to continue the development of still, film-based photography in the 21st century.
VISIONARY PROJECT AWARD FINALISTS
©J Houston: Brooklyn, New York, USA
©Liz Sanders: Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
©Daniel Soares: Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
©Paweł Starzec: Warszawa, Polska, Poland
©Bianca Sturchio and riel Sturchio: Austin, Texas, USA
VISIONARY PROJECTS AWARD STAND-OUTS
©Lizzie Chen, Austin, Texas, USA
©Yvette Marie Dostatni: Chicago, Illinois, USA
©Matt Eich: Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
©McNair Evans: San Francisco, California, USA
©Michael Floor: Amsterdam, Netherlands
©Keegan Holden: Los Angeles, California, USA
©Charles Lee: Berkeley, California, USA
©Auston Marek: San Francisco, California, USA
©Madeleine Morlet: Rockport, Maine, USA
©Jacob Moss: Durham, North Carolina, USA
©Nate Palmer: Washington DC, USA
©Lydia Panas: Kutztown, Pennsylvania, USA
©Marissa Roth: Santa Monica, California, USA
©Ioanna Sakellaraki: Brussels, Belgium
©Michele Spatari: Johannesburg, South Africa
©Karen Stentaford: Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
©Nick Tauro Jr: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
©Nick Verhaeghe: Knokke-heist, Belgium
©Rogério Vieira: São Paulo, Brazil
©Sara Winston: Newburgh, New York, USA
©Jaclyn Wright: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
©Zhidong Zhang: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
FILM PHOTO STUDENT PROJECT AWARD FINALISTS
©Silvia Borja: Brigham Young University – based in Provo, Utah, USA
©Hadley Chittum: George Washington University – based in Roanoke, Virginia, USA
©Chance Deville: Rhode Island School of Design – based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA
©Andy Garcia: Bard College – based in New York, New York, USA
©Matilde Viegas: Universidade do Porto – based in Porto, Portugal
FILM PHOTO STUDENT PROJECT AWARD STANDOUTS
©Ranran Fan: University of New Mexico – based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
©Luca Hoffmann: Maine College of Art – based in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
©Joy Johnson: Barry University – based in Miami, Florida, USA
©Saskia Kahn: Maryland Institute College of Art – based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA
©Olivia Noss: Pratt Institute – based in Washington DC, USA
©Julian Raiford: Amherst College – based in Kingsport, Tennessee, USA
©Markiesha Thornton: Georgia State University – based in Brookhaven, Georgia, USA
© Allie Tsubota: Rhode Island School of Design – based in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
©Berta Vicente: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya – based in Barcelona, Spain
©Jule Wild: Fachhochschule Dortmund – based in Münster, Germany
Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.
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![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](https://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
