Emerging photographers from Canada, the United Kingdom & the ...

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Foreword
What does it take to get into Flash Forward? It takes a lot. First off, the images have
to look good. That sounds obvious, but if you think how the competition is organized,
you’ll see how important it really is. Divided into three categories—Canada, the U.K.
and the U.S.—the competition is judged by a panel of 11 judges from the three countries,
who look at all the images. Each category receives nearly 300 entries, and while some
consist of only three or four images, most submit at least 10.
That means that each judge looks at roughly 1,000 entries and 10,000 images in total,
in order to select 120 entrants for the exhibition and one overall winner. That’s an awful
lot of images, and initially the judges are looking at them as thumbnails on an online
content management system. We have the opportunity to blow them up, and go outside
the CMS to the photographer’s site but initially, that’s it.
Making a set of images strong enough to stand out in those circumstances is no mean
feat, and for me, a lot of projects fell by the wayside at that stage on purely aesthetic
grounds. A strong concept behind the images is essential because without it the project
doesn’t have legs, but for me, if the photographs themselves didn’t look good, the
project bit the dust. Photography is a visual art, and I think it’s essential to retain what
Jason Evans has called the enjoyment of looking.
What makes an image or project “good” though, is harder to define. In some cases it
meant “aesthetically pleasing to me,” as in Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s gorgeous shots of
Cossack women. But I also found Christopher Capozziello’s raw, moving black-andwhite
shots in The Distance Between Us very moving. Jasmine Bakalarz’s cool shots of
equestrians impressed me with their hauteur, but I was also interested in Tara Sellios’s
creepy/beautiful still-life shots.
In looking at a series of images, though, I and the other judges also considered how
they worked together. This could mean sticking to one subject and photographing it
over and over again, or it could mean building a story with a communicative beginning,
middle and end. To continue the examples given above, for me, Capozziello’s images
worked together brilliantly to tell the story of his twin brother, his challenges and
their relationship, while Bakalarz’s shots stick to a close typology. Again, I didn’t try to
define it too hard, but you know what works when you see it.
Flash Forward is an open competition, which means that any project of any theme
can be entered, and still life, art, documentary, fashion and more end up being pitched
against each other. Choosing between such wildly differing subjects is hard, as you’re
not comparing like with like. Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have written of
how strange it is to compare “a French landscape, a dead guerilla, an HIV-positive
mother and an American soldier” when judging World Press Photo (“Unconcerned but
not indifferent,” 2008); all I can say is, they should try Flash Forward.
By necessity, a “good” image ended up being some kind or combination of ugly, beautiful
or unusual that made the project stand out from the other 999. In the end, it’s entirely
subjective, so photographers who didn’t get in can take heart—at another time, with
another set of judges, they might have made the grade, because the overall standard
was extremely high.
As a final twist, though, the projects had to be more than just “good.” They also had to
push the boundaries, because Flash Forward is a competition for emerging photographers,
the next generation of stars. I wasn’t just looking for well-conceived and realized work,
I was looking for good projects that expressed something unique to the photographer.
Striking out on your own is hard; it’s much easier to look accomplished if you’re copying
someone else.
I was interested to see how the photographs divided up from country to country.
For example, the U.K. entries seemed to be stronger on “traditional photojournalism,”
the U.S. category included lots of sun-kissed, Stephen Shore-esque work. I wondered
why, when so many of the photographers were actually born elsewhere, then realized
it was because they were still drawing on what they’ve been taught. It’s more interesting
when young photographers move beyond this stage, even if the results aren’t quite
there yet, because while I already know what Stephen Shore’s work looks like, “the
future is in the minds of the next generation,” as Thomas Ruff put it at the What’s Next?
photography conference at Amsterdam’s Foam gallery this spring.
For all these reasons and more, I was very happy to see Jessica Eaton win the overall
prize this year. Her images are subtle and left-field, so I voted her into Flash Forward
wondering if the other judges would do so. In the end, she was not only voted in but
suggested as the over-all winner very early on. The final decision was close, but we
kept coming back to Eaton and the sheer creativeness of her work. “I find it inventive,
insightful and fun to look at, persuasive in its articulation,” said one judge.
“Her work questions and pushes the boundaries of the medium as well as offering a
reflection on art and art history,” added another. “But even if her work is a reflection on
the medium, it still has a very strong formal and aesthetic appeal. Here, conceptualism
is intellectually interesting and remarkably on-point without being overwhelming to
the viewer’s purely aesthetic attraction to the work. There’s something very beautiful
to these photographs.”
What does it take to win Flash Forward? This year, it took inventiveness, insight,
beauty and the ability to push the boundaries. That’s a tall order for any photographer,
let alone a photographer still starting out. Flash Forward is about photography,
the future of photography and whatever it is that’s photographed, but in the end, it’s
also about looking back down the camera at the photographer.
Diane SMyth
Deputy editor, British Journal of Photography
FF