Portrait: Self and Others

Juror's Statement

I’ve always felt that taking a photograph of someone else, is in fact, a form of self-portraiture. The decisions that the photographic artist makes—faces they are drawn to and the ways they interpret the experience, says a lot about the subject but also about who is taking the portrait. Though this exhibition celebrates the faces of others, the self is ever present.

I have just spent the last week immersed in your photographs, revisiting and reconsidering each image. It was an exciting and daunting process, and, in the end, I selected about 3 times the amount that could be included in the exhibition. So, thank you for submitting so much excellent work and making my decisions so difficult! It was inspiring to see the range of approaches and the array of imaginative imagery. Thank you to all who submitted such varied and spectacular approaches to considering each other.

The photographs selected for the awards were images that I returned to again and again over the jurying. Each portrait has a particular essence: an immediacy, a sense of humor or pathos, and they were well seen and well crafted. As a juror, I look for intention and a level of excellence. With the ubiquitous-ness of photography today, creative approaches to all genres of photography shift the norm and reinvigorate the medium, as evidenced by all the submissions to this exhibition. The photographs selected for the exhibition are like small novellas--moments of someone’s life captured somewhere between the beginning, middle, or ending of a personal narrative.

It is not an easy task to juror an exhibition, especially one where storytelling, intention, and the essence of a human being needs to be conveyed in a single image. With all exhibitions, there are many wall-worthy submissions that come steps away from the finish line, only to be rejected due to constraints of space. Finally, I am not only selecting single images, but also curating a group of photographs into an exhibition that needs feel fresh and have a strong point of view. 

  —  Aline Smithson

Call for Entries

A great portrait reveals something of the depth, history, and emotional state of the subject, at least as captured in a single moment in time. Although many portraits zero in on the face, many fine images don't show the face at all, instead using light, gesture, context, and other nuances of expression to create an informative portrait.

For this exhibit we seek portraits, self- or otherwise, that go beyond the surface to explore a deeper vision of the subject and, hopefully, draw an emotional response from the viewer.

We are very pleased that Aline Smithson will jury the exhibit. She will select approximately 35 images for exhibition in the Middlebury gallery, and up to 40 for our Online gallery. All 75 selected images will be promoted on social media, reproduced in the exhibition print catalog, and remain permanently on our website, with links to photographer’s URL. 

About the Juror