The DSI Portfolio Awards is a shared platform providing three recent graduates of photography with financial assistance in printing a professional portfolio. This year’s awardees share a strikingly sophisticated and nuanced eye with a keen awareness of their concept and its context. Collectively each crystalizes their unique finds of specific investigations. Their discerning and original choice of final output formats complement and underscore their work’s intent. My appreciation to my fellow jurors, Debra Clomp Ching and Stephen Marc for their thoughtful and engaged contributions to the selection process.
Dylan Everett recently graduated from Brown University and is now completing an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Structural Photography, is his series of aerial topographies. Seductively these engaging abstractions are at first a pleasing amalgam of color, form and texture. With time the viewer comprehends the actual residential housing mazes, agricultural industries and strip-mines within the capture. Everett concretizes our complicity in the development of this humanly altered landscape. Stephen reflects on this compelling work; “A strong and unique concept, containing a mystery, consistent vision, and bold use of white space.”
Michelle Rogers Prtizl has studied photography and earned three art degrees, most recently as a MFA graduate of Lesley University College of Art and Design. She is widely exhibited and known for her use of alternate and historical processes. In Not Waving But Drowning, whose title references Stevie Smith’s poem of the same name, Pritzl explores Fundamentalist Christianity’s tenets that serve to control and manipulate women. Her image titles reference Kate Chopin’sThe Awakening, and are a tribute to the artist’s autobiographical freedom from this restrictive belief system. The combination of the collodion process and an oval frame in collaboration with contemporary digital media practices mirrors her conscious choice to evolve, taking some aspects of the past while exercising her self-determination and embrace of the modern.
It was an insightful honor being one of the jurors for the DSI competition, and congratulations to the three award recipients. The process was challenging and rewarding due to the range and depth of the images submitted. I wish all the best to each of the entrants, and I hope that our paths cross again. – Stephen Marc
Emily Schiffer is a mixed media artist and photographer interested in art’s ability to initiate community engagement and foster social change. Kin is an intimate portrayal of family life. These unposed portraits capture moments in her interracial and cross-culturally blended family. Her images hold a space between documentary narrative and documenting feeling. Stephen’s comments: “Each could stand alone but tie in an intimate narrative. I was impressed with these documentary style portraits because of the alternating interactions, environmental details, and dynamic lighting that project a mood of domestic warmth.”
Award winners will receive $1250 in printing services from Digital Silver Imaging. The Jurors and Digital Silver Imaging would like to thank everyone who submitted work. Although we had our lowest number of entries for the 2017 award, we feel that the quality of the work was exceptional. In this slideshow, we’d like to recognize a few of the photographers who made excellent work, but unfortunately, did not win
Why shoot film? With a new full frame digital camera hitting the market every couple of months, this is a good question. Photography has become a ubiquitous part of our lives with smart phones, iPads and Instagram. Arguably the ease and quality of producing the quotidian photographic image has also improved with the digital age, so what’s the appeal of the archaic image technology of film?
Film Forces You to Think
Ansel Adams stated that previsualization is, ”the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure.” Shooting film makes the photographer think about exposure, composition and point of view before depressing the shutter release. In many ways film can make photography a more contemplative process. Slowing down and concentrating is both transformative and rewarding.
Film is a long lasting hard copy of your image. Unlike a digital file, one bad keystroke can’t delete your negative. Properly stored color negative film should last for decades and b&w is expected to last as long as 500 years if properly processed and stored. A good CD’s archival life is 25 years. And who knows what electronic media will be supported in the next 10 years.* BTW does anyone have a driver for a Jazz Drive that works with High Sierra?
Many of us have at least one old film camera laying around. If you compare the cost of a full frame digital camera and lens with a used/free film camera the difference could pay for a lot of film and processing. This claim has to come with a caveat, I have a friend who “binge shoots” film. She says that for her film is “like crack!” She is currently looking for a 12 step program.
Film is Fun
The hands on nature of film, the “magic” of seeing your negatives for the first time, big sturdy cameras made of metal, wood and leather, using a mechanical device that maybe older than yourself, the randomness that can occur, all this makes film an experience that is rich and multifaceted. Film is fun!
Is film photography going away?
In a recent conversation with KEH Camera, they state that film camera sales remain strong and a substantial portion of their business. Both Ilford and Fuji Film report strong film sales. Shooting film has become hip, and millennials are the largest consumers of film. With all this evidence I think that film will be around for a little while longer.
