©Daniel Chatard, No Man’s Land (05), 2018

Today we share the Student Project Finalists and the Visionary Project Finalists in the Fall 2021 Film Photo Award .

The Film Photo Award Fall 2021 Juror, Larisa Leclair shares some remarks about the selections:

In the 1990’s, just before the integration of digital photography into the college curriculum, I was a student getting my BFA in Photography and developing and printing my own color negatives. Most chose black & white but I felt quite at home with the warm vanilla smell of color chemicals for developing and the pitch-black darkroom for making prints. The cost and craft proved to be an eventual hurdle as digital darkrooms took over.

Refreshingly, the Film Photo Award, established by Eliot Dudik, celebrates and supports artists who use film with the gift of Kodak Professional Film and complimentary processing by Griffin Editions. For this Fall 2021, it was such an honor to act as juror, and read through the proposals and select the Visionary and Student Awards. Magda Biernat and Odette England are such powerhouse artists and fitting of the award. I look forward to seeing what they make and have no doubt the realization of their projected projects will be extraordinary.

The student pool was absolutely outstanding and while I wish I could select everyone, Owen McCarter’s project stood out for the collaborative community aspect.

 Congratulations to the winners and finalists and I look forward to seeing the work!

Student Project Finalists

©Daniel Chatard, No Man’s Land (07), 2017

Daniel Chatard

Daniel Chatard (*1996 in Heidelberg) is a German-French documentary and portrait photographer. In his projects, Chatard investigates social dynamics and conflicts. He is particularly interested in how these manifest in physical space. Recurring themes in his research are collective identities, borders and environment.

Daniel holds a BA degree in photojournalism and documentary photography from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover. In 2018, he spent a semester abroad at Tomsk State University in Russia. He is currently studying in the MA Photographic Studies at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund.

©Daniel Chatard, No Man’s Land (10), 2018

©Daniel Chatard, No Man’s Land (11), 2017

Man Zhu

UnFrame: Relationship  is a body of photo-based works through which I explore my subconscious behavior by showing my relationships with people around me. My creative process draws on the principles of semiotics, finding the representative elements of the different subjects, appropriating and retaining each subject’s past, and integrating them into self-portraiture. It is significance for this body of works to use the expired film of a specific year for imaging. The year of my parents, lovers and self birth have become my symbols, bearing an indelible trace of years on the negative. Due to the uncontrollable samples and media of the subject matter, the final images and initial ideas are often dissimilar. This phenomenon can be mapped to the expectation and reality of human relationships.

©Man Zhu, 1994: The Year I Was Born, 2021

©Man Zhu, 1994 & 1999: Hug, 2021

©Man Zhu, 1994 & 1999: Cross, 2021

Conner Gordon

Oregon-based photographer (b. 1994) exploring home, belonging, and provisional spaces. MFA candidate at the University of Oregon, situated on the traditional homelands of the Kalapuya people.

Founding editor of Epistem, a digital publication examining photography, ethics, and social change.

©Conner Gordon, 70a, 2019

©Conner Gordon, 45, 2019

©Conner Gordon, 23, 2020

Visionary Project Finalists

©Peter Cochrane, Untited 04, 2021

Peter Cochrane

Peter Cochrane examines ever-changing scientific classifications of plants and biology through photographic self-portraiture, abstraction, floral arrangements, and installation. He explores the fabrication of histories, the systemic and damaging categorization of people through political systems, and the effects of trauma and recovery.

His work has appeared in BOMB, Headmaster, The San Francisco Chronicle, Vast Magazine, Hyperallergic, Brink, Artslant, the MoCP lecture series, the de Young Museum, the Vermont Center for Photography, the Tokyo International Photo Awards, and others. He is a recipient of the Snider Prize and has been a finalist for several awards including the Hopper Prize, the Fine Art Photography Award, the Exposure Award, and the Kodak Photo Film Award. He has held several solo exhibitions nationally, and his work is in public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

He is currently a lecturer in the Photography and Film department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

©Peter Cochrane, Untited 03, 2021

©Peter Cochrane, Untited 02, 2021

Chance DeVille

Chance is a queer artist and poet born and raised in Southwest Louisiana. Their photographs and prose climb inside of trauma, queerness, and landscape where they search all of the nooks and crannies on their way out. Chance currently resides in Providence where they are teaching at Brown University.

©Chance DeVille, Untitled 14, 2020

©Chance DeVille, Untitled 02, 2020

©Chance DeVille, Untitled 10, 2020

Jarod Lew

Jarod Lew is a Chinese American artist and photographer currently based in Metro Detroit, Michigan. His work explores themes of identity, community and displacement. His most recent project, “Please Take off Your Shoes,” addresses the contradictions inherent to constructions of Asian American identity and examines images of Asian subjects and objects within America’s suburban landscape. The series was inspired by the shocking discovery that his mother was the fiancé of Vincent Chin who was murdered by two autoworkers in Highland Park, Michigan. The outcome of his death sparked the Asian American movement in 1982. In 2021, the project was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize.

A portrait from his first project “South of Heaven” was exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2016, and his second project “Maybe I’ll See You There” won the PDN Emerging Photographer award. His photographs have also been exhibited at the Center for Photography Woodstock, Detroit Institute of Arts, Design Museum of London, and Philharmonie de Paris. His clients include New Yorker, New York Times, Financial Times Weekend, GQ and NPR.

©Jarod Lew, Please Take Off Your Shoes, 2021

©Jarod Lew, Winson, 2019

©Jarod Lew, Cockfight, 2020

Erinn Springer

Erinn is based between Menomonie, Wisconsin and Brooklyn, New York. Her work examines the character of rural life, the cycles of the land, and the reflective relationship between people and their environments.

She loves sweet potatoes, storms, and swing sets.

©Erinn Springer, Untitled 10, 2019

©Erinn Springer, Untitled 9, 2019

©Erinn Springer, Untitled 5, 2019