Afterimage, © Joyce Ernst 2023

Pasadena Photography Arts is thrilled to announce that the PPA Photo Award 2024 has been granted to Joyce Ernst for her project, “The Uncertainty of Being.” This year’s PPA Photo Award was an open call for “Excellence in Contemporary Photography” accepting projects from emerging and professional photographers around the United States. This award is dedicated to projects that have had limited or no prior public exposure or publication. We are proud to offer this annual award that gives a platform to voices and visions that deserve to be seen and heard.

Joyce Ernst’s award winning project is featured below alongside an exclusive interview with guest juror Rose Shoshana founder of the internationally recognized Rose Gallery. Don’t miss the opportunity to dive into Joyce’s creative journey—join Pasadena Photography Arts on Tuesday, October 15th at 5:30pm PDT for a VIRTUAL artist talk where Joyce will share the story behind her project!

2024 PPA Photo Award Winner: Joyce Ernst

Joyce Ernst is a lens-based artist whose work explores the intricate tensions of the human experience, capturing the emotional landscapes that define our existence. Her photographs are often unsettling and enigmatic, engaging a twisted frequency replete with evocative color and missing information.

Joyce grew up in suburban Philadelphia and now lives in Dallas, Texas and Sun Valley, Idaho. In addition to holding a BA and MBA from the University of Virginia, she completed an MFA in media studies at the Maine Media College in 2023. Her work has been exhibited by the Atlanta Photography Group, the Texas Photographic Society, the Sun Valley Airport Arts Committee and numerous online magazines.

Instagram: @joyceernstphoto

Evening Commute © Joyce Ernst 2022

The Uncertainty of Being

As an adoptee, I understand and experience the world in terms of incomplete information, or what is not known. I am interested in the multiple tensions inherent in this uncertainty: longing and disconnection, curiosity and anxiety, and the resulting thwarted resolution. In many ways it makes sense that I have chosen photography as my artistic medium because there is a relationship between the slipperiness of perception and how I experience the world. A photograph can give the impression of truth and be enigmatic at the same time. A good photograph asks questions. This body of work, The Uncertainty of Being, investigates looking for something that is both ambiguous and specific and always a little out of reach. These photographs were shot in cities, places teeming with people in spaces of visual assault. People are together and alone, seen and unknowable. In shooting this work I relaxed conventions and intentions and just let things fall to chance, and in the process found myself making these cryptic and unsettling visual experiences that are not narrative, but resonate on an emotional level. They exist along the edge between abstraction and figuration, dreams and reality, and knowing and not knowing. This is the emotional landscape that is familiar to me—a puzzling place where people are, for the most part unknowable. With this work, I am challenging the viewer to unravel meaning and also impeding them from doing it. I am asking them to contend with the uncertainty of being.

The Ghost of You © Joyce Ernst 2023

A note from guest juror Rose Shoshana: My fascination with the work of Joyce Ernst is not only the final presentation of her images, it is also about her practice which I find impressive. She goes out into the world and does not hold a preconceived notion of what she’s after. She allows herself to freely roam and take in the spaces she finds herself in and the humans she encounters. I find her images of quotidian life quite humanistic and empathetic and at the same time, understanding her practice, [all created in the camera using a variety of techniques], and the results which she is not even aware of until she views the images in her studio, so captivating and unique.

Echo Chamber © Joyce Ernst 2023

Rose Shoshana: I’d be curious to know about your process. Do you go out with a plan in mind or do you allow yourself to ‘meander’ and capture an image that comes to you?

Joyce Ernst:  There is never much of a plan when I go out to take photographs. For me, making images is a way of experiencing the world with curiosity. It starts from a place of mystery. It’s this state of ‘not knowing’ that moves me forward, letting one thing point to the next without a prescribed path. It’s kind of like improv. I’m given something and I say “Yes, and.” I am constantly adjusting to each new piece of information and building on it. It makes sense that this way of working produces photographs that often operate as open metaphors. In that way, the content of the work and my process are aligned.

It really is a process of discovery. Sometimes when I am editing the photographs, it is as if I’m seeing them for the first time. And it is only after I’ve shot and looked at hundreds, or even thousands of images that I begin to see patterns and identify themes in the work.

Love, You’re Not Alone © Joyce Ernst 2023

RS: I’m especially fond of the image of the human in the blue coat and blue trousers next to the bluish image to the right of it. Can you elaborate how the two came together for you?

JE: Sometimes when I’m shooting in cities, I am leaving a lot of things up to chance. I’m shooting in a way that is in opposition to my formal training–kind of out of control and fast, almost like a dance. But other times I stop and investigate a subject more deliberately, which is what I did here. Many of my images have a tension about them created by an unexpected juxtaposition or a fracturing of the frame. In this particular photograph there is the figure on the left and an advertising screen on the right, and when I shot it, the graphics on the screen were changing with some frequency. I probably began shooting as an investigation of the figure, but in the exploration, I framed the figure in relationship to the screen, which gave me a changing tableau of imagery. Then it was just serendipitous that another figure showed up on the screen.

City Shoal © Joyce Ernst 2023

RS:  Your images strike me as being both abstract and figurative. There’s an emotional resonance to them which is enhanced by your process. Might you elaborate on how you think about the abstract and figurative coming together and creating emotion which is not easy to do.

JE: I do think the work exists along the edge between abstraction and figuration and I hope that these photographs provoke feelings. So often we see photography within the framework of advertising or the media and it’s easy for our first tendency to be to read a photograph as a description, an external reality. These images contain people, but they are blurred or obscured, and they exist in the context of photographic elements that create tension: fractured frames, unusual cropping, compressed space and saturated color, for example. I think the ways I have used the tools of photography combined with my process of shooting intuitively have helped the photographs to read more like paintings, on an emotional level.

Equivocation © Joyce Ernst 2023

RS: What is the camera technique used to distort the images?

JE: The distortions are all created in camera, and often use intentional camera movements of various kinds. Also, I sometimes shoot through translucent surfaces. Very little is done in post, other than color adjustments and occasional cropping.

Last Call © Joyce Ernst 2023

Crosswalks © Joyce Ernst 2023

Between Here and There © Joyce Ernst 2023

Double Bind © Joyce Ernst 2023

I Used to Be © Joyce Ernst 2023

Night Walkers © Joyce Ernst 2023

Stay © Joyce Ernst 2023

About Pasadena Photography Arts

Pasadena Photography Arts (PPA) is dedicated to promoting diverse photography projects by established and emerging photographers worldwide. Through a series of both in-person and virtual events, PPA is creating a global art community for photographers, by photographers. To achieve the mission, PPA’s ongoing programming includes FORUM where we invite special guests including museum curators, art educators, and long-established photographers. And through Open Show – Pasadena/East LA, we support the projects of emerging and professional fine art, documentary and conceptual photographers. We hope to see you at a future event!

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