Resonance

11th Annual Photographic Competition Exhibition

Juror: Paul Kopeikin

On view: July 14 – August 30, 2006

Juror’s Statement

It’s hard to believe that I used to have to rent a slide projector, figure out how to use it, and go through thousands of slides in order to judge an exhibition like this. Of course that was much earlier in the Century and now it’s all on a CD. Although the images on my screen are smaller than what I use to project, there is just as much distance between what I’m seeing and the actual work of art. Which is to say there is an inherent unfairness in the process of judging an artist’s work based on a reproduction rather than the actual work of art. Fortunately the art world delivers unfairness at every step and so nothing could be more fair than for the unfairness to begin with the first step.

Choosing work for this exhibition was different than others I have judged in that we decided on a more well-rounded view of the photographer’s work and so decided they had to have three images rather than a single image. So I let some good images go because they stood alone. Other photographer’s had two out of the three and again, they were dismissed. I was reminded of playing a slot machine, and of course this is all a gamble. But in the end there were more than enough good photographers with three images so that I had to go back and revisit work from my first go around. At that point I started reading Artist Statements to see who was actually following through on their vision. And, of course, I looked even more closely the second and third time around.

For all of you looking at the exhibition, wondering about my choices and thinking you could do better I say – prove it. Send your work next time or find another worthy competition and instead of thinking about sending something in – do it.
–Paul Kopeikin

Awards:
1st Place Award
Joelle Jensen, NY

2nd Place Award
Lisa M. Robinson, NY

3rd Place Award
Jeongmee Yoon, NY

Honorable Mentions:
Tara McDermott, WA
Lydia Panas, PA
Saul Robbins, NY
Amy Stein, NY

Featured Photographers:
Alstrup, Dorthe, NY
Bennett, Toni, WA
Bergman, Sky, CA
Cutting, Ann Elliott, CA
Deiss, Joseph, OR
Fernandez, Baldomero, NY
Fink, Benjamin, NY
Hennessey Botkin, Liza, CA
Jensen, Joelle, NY
Jenkins III, John, WA
Joyce, Kate, NM
Klemm, Eric, B.C., CAN
Lang, Mary, MA
Larson, R. Dean, CA
McDermott, Tara, WA
Meesig, Chandra J., MA
Miller, Steven, WA
Panas, Lydia, PA
Reynolds, Craig, GA
Robbins, Saul, NY
Robinson, Lisa M., NY
Smith Allen, Hannah, NY
Stein, Amy, NY
Thomsen, Sonja, WI
Yoon, Jeongmee, NY