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Essential Water
Prints of most of these images are available for purchase. Please inquire.
All photographs are the copyright of the individual artists and may not be reproduced without their permission.
Juror's Statement
When jurying, I strive to move past my own visual biases to appreciate those interpretations outside my usual oeuvre as an artist and collector. I look for images that make me stop and feel something beyond the appreciation of the effort involved in creation.
As I repeatedly worked my way through the large number of images before beginning the elimination process, it was fascinating to see the variety within the approaches and treatments that emerged. I had to omit some wonderful images to create a cohesive and varied exhibition. I’m deeply grateful to PhotoPlace Gallery and to each of the photographers for the opportunity of viewing your work. Because the Gallery uses a blind jury process, I’m excited to learn who the chosen photographers are and to see the titles of their images.
The honorees were difficult to choose as I was moved by so many of the images. Ultimately, I chose those that resonated deeply with me at the beginning of the process and at each viewing thereafter, though there were certainly others deserving of accolades. Each of these images eliciting gasps, and it was surprising to realize at the end that both of the top award-winning images included people, although in quite distinct offerings. Neither person is identifiable, which made the pictures more about the water itself as an essential, sustaining force.
The Juror’s Award goes to a stunning, dynamic image that I could not get out of my head once viewed. The simple, yet forceful gesture of the strong figure reverberates in the velocity of the splashing water. I was immersed in the interplay of strength and fragility and of light and darkness, bringing to mind both the powerful storms that devastate and the precious resource that is disappearing. It’s beautifully captured and rendered and I longed to see the depth of tones in a print.
There is something sublimely sensual, soothing, and evocative in the exquisite image receiving my Director’s Award. I was drawn to the gentle, graceful expression of the hands, echoed in the fluid, organic forms of the floating leaves, the glimpse of the elegant, undulating edge of her dress, and the ripples of the nuanced, shifting colors of the water that envelops them - each layer is its own delicate wave of lusciousness.
— Wendi Schneider
Call for Entries
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” – Loren Eiseley
Water: sustainer of all life, ever various in its sources and forms, a magnet for imagination, meditation, fear, and wonder. Photographers have been making images of water since photography’s birth, drawn to the beauty and changeability of fog, mist, spray, ice, oceans and rivers, lakes and streams, rain, sleet, snow, puddles, and waves.
For this exhibit we seek photographs that capture the unique qualities of water—the way it catches light, cuts through the earth, falls from the sky, sustains or threatens life, and changes its forms.
We are very pleased that Wendi Schneider will be jurying and curating this exhibition. She will select approximately 35 images for exhibition in the gallery, and 40 for our Online Gallery. All 75 selected images will be reproduced in the exhibition print catalog and remain permanently on our website, with links to photographer’s URL.
Information about our printing service and free matting and framing here.
Banner image: Kimberly Holtyn
Click to enlarge image.
About the Juror
Wendi Schneider is a Denver-based visual artist known for her ongoing series of hand-gilded photographs, States of Grace –– illuminated impressions of grace in the natural world. Drawn to the serenity she finds in the sinuous elegance of organic forms, she embraces photography to preserve vanishing moments of beauty in our vulnerable environment. Schneider has perfected a gilding process in which her images seemingly dance on the paper’s surface amidst reflections of light on precious metals, creating a synthesis of technique and subject.
Wendi Schneider's photographs are held in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and Auburn University Library Special Collections, among others. She is represented by A Gallery for Fine Photography (New Orleans); Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta); Catherine Couturier Gallery (Houston), Galeria PhotoGraphic (San Miguel de Allende), Rick Wester Fine Art (New York City); and Vision Gallery (Jerusalem), and sits on the executive board of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.