A Sense of Place

Juror's Statement

Photographs that convey a “sense of place” blend the physical characteristics of a scene, landscape or object with the mysterious essence that emerges from gradually and perhaps unconsciously inhabiting a place over time. The photograph ceases to become an objective document. Instead, it takes on a particular feeling that is invested with something that is often intangible, revealing a deeper understanding of what lies beneath the surface.

How is this “sense of place” communicated in a photograph? Many components including light, content and composition are important, as are clarity and craftsmanship. A well made photograph, for me, is the visual equivalent of a poem, evoking feelings and emotions. A quote from an essay in The Atlantic by Mark Yakich, “What Is a Poem,” states… “A poem helps the mind play with its well-trod patterns of thought, and can even help reroute those patterns by making us see the familiar anew.”

Subjectivity, of course, is inevitable. Selecting photographs is necessarily contingent of the particular jurors taste and aesthetic. That said, it was a privilege and honor to jury “A Sense of Place".

- Jane Fulton Alt

About the Juror

Jane Fulton Alt’s photographs explore universal issues of humanity and the non–material. She is the three-time winner of Photolucida’s Critical Mass for her Katrina and Burn portfolios, recipient of the 2007 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award, and multiple Ragdale Foundation Fellowships. She has authored two books; Look and Leave: Photographs and Stories of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, and The Burn. Her Crude Awakening portfolio was published worldwide.

She received the Photo District News 2011 Curators Choice Award and the 2012 Humble Arts 31 Women in Art Photography award. Alt’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, New Orleans Museum of Art, De Paul University Art Museum, Southwest Museum of Photography, Beinecke Library at Yale University, Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and the collection of William Hunt.

Call for Entries

Photographs that convey a "sense of place" blend the physical characteristics of a scene, landscape or object with the mysterious essence that emerges from gradually and perhaps unconsciously inhabiting a place over time.  The photograph ceases to become an objective document. Instead, it takes on a particular feeling that is invested with something that is often intangible, revealing a deeper understanding of what lies beneath the surface.

All capture methods and processes are welcome.