2011 Award Recipients

2011 Honorable Mentions

Hearst Corporation today announced the winners of the second Hearst 8 X 10 Photography Biennial, an international competition that recognizes the work of talented young photographers—eight rising artists whose vision will shape the future of the creative media landscape, selected by 10 of the world’s foremost photographers, gallery owners and magazine professionals. The 2011 Hearst 8 X 10 Photography Biennial garnered more than 4,600 entries from across the U.S. as well as 70 other countries, five times the number of entries garnered in the 2009 inaugural competition.

[Note: copied straight from the press release]

Recommended Posts

Take Time Out To Appreciate The Power Of Photography Today
National Magazine Awards 2013 Finalists

27 Comments

  1. I’m extremely curious as to what Nicholas Mendise submitted to be selected as a winner. His portfolio doesn’t really scream out much other than he knows where to find anorexic models.

    • @Richard, well, that sort of thing is the New York contemporary chic, don’t you know. Your photography is nothing unless you’ve crawled up your own butt and died.

      • @Ryan M, @Richard–well it sounds like people above are just jealous and bitter that maybe their work did not get picked. It is real easy to pick on someone else isn’t it!

        • @Lisa Rogers, Right, because I can’t imagine a scenario in which me and Richard didn’t enter this contest.

    • The one with the legs hanging from a tree was especially choice. We are lynching women now? Or is it that suicide by hanging is fashionable? I’m not sure…

  2. Sorry but none were much better than the top 10% of photographers on Flickr. Most of the web page navigation sucked. The photos were almost as bad as the Blurb book winner this year. Really disappointing.

    • @William,
      Are you really going to complain about other people’s webpages? Really???

      • @John., Load and navigation, yes. Seems you find mine hard?

    • @William, this reminds me of a recent presentation I saw from a former longtime National Geographic photographer. The guy had a number of incredible photos from his career, but quite a few of his unpublished and even some of his published shots (which he meticulously dissected for the audience on a large screen) were the kinds of shots that might MAYBE get two or three comments/faves on Flickr if released into the wild without claiming to be from some amazing Natty Geo photographer. So much of being a successful photographer has nothing to do with talent and ability and everything to do with working your butt off and sleeping in your car on assignment for years and years and years and knowing who to know, and every so often getting really incredibly lucky.

  3. Hate to echo what everyone above me has said but i honestly found the winners galleries uninspiring. Surely “10 of the world’s foremost photographers, gallery owners and magazine professionals” could have done better.

    • @Nic,
      I couldn’t agree more. Everything is glowering and beige, like I am trapped in a library in Northern Indiana in 1987 filled with soft light to hide any semblance of interesting detail.
      Apparently the proverbial limb artists are supposed to go out on is short and firmly lodged in the ground surrounded by pillows.

  4. Maybeit is me, but why are these so highly acclaimed? Sorry.

  5. I wasn’t blown away by all of them but some of them are quite good. I really liked Jonathan Smith’s work.

    Why the hate-fest? I, for one, want to congratulate the winners. At least they put some effort into pursuing their career instead of just putting other people down for their achievements.

  6. I too congratulate the winners for sticking their neck out there (I don’t often) but for me the work isn’t inspiring. Not a hate fest and if you only want happy comments say so. The judges loved the work. What do I know?

  7. Why differentiate Brooklyn NY from New York NY?? ugh…

    • @Jay, Tell me about it. Don’t you watch Bored to Death?

  8. I’m glad to see Jonathan Smith’s solid work recognized.

    Like any other “best of” list, awards, or contest, you’re gonna love some and you’re gonna hate some. If you don’t like the winners’ work, enter and try to change the game.

    • @Tim, Smith’s work is mostly solid, except for Untold Stories. Don’t get me wrong, Bridge Project, East/West are really solid, solid pieces. Untold Stories, while having some fantastic images, feels like its trying to be PLdC but without the power or the subtlety, mainly the images with people in them. In time I bet he could pull it off.

  11. I’m surprised at how quickly my name began to pop up when I googled myself, after Hearst. This is a very exciting opportunity – I’d love it if you could update the post with my website. :)

    http://www.jenny-johannesson.com

    • Hi Jenny, Now that you’ve provided a link to your website, I’m wondering if you would be willing to tell us a little bit about your work. (I’m not sure I understand what it is that you’re trying to communicate by casting children in those kinds of adult roles…) I would love to hear what it means for you.

      • @Cynthia Wood, Sure, I’d love to! I’m going to try to keep it short – I have a tendency to ramble. Basically, this project aims to capture the “inner child of American cultural stereotypes”. (Cultural stereotypes, I say as a Swede, meaning what’s typically associated around the world with American society)

        Children were chosen as models for several reasons. I am capturing “the inner child” of struggling adults. By “inner child” I am referencing the emotions that we experience when going through hard times. These emotions are those most often expressed freely and openly by children, such as an obvious want of support, love, protection and encouragement. Someone to take over the steering wheel and guide you through the rough patches. This “inner child” is universal and resides in all adults. I have simply taken a very literal approach to this metaphor.

        Then there is the fact that many children in America will grow up to see the future displayed in these images, for various reasons. Most of them end up this way, as I see it, not by choice, but because of how the American society functions and how it views its people. Philippe Bourgois refers to this specific phenomena in his article “Understanding Inner-City Poverty: Resistance and Self-Destruction under U.S. Apartheid”, in which he interviews Porto Rican inner-city males who explain how they were driven away from honest work, as a result of the underlying racism and prejudice that existed in the office. They eventually became the very stereotype that had been projected on to their person.

        I also elected to use children in my portrayal of stereotypes as a way of engaging the viewer in a subject matter that has been talked about so many times before. Upon arriving in San Francisco, my heart would break as I passed homeless people on the sidewalks, and I found myself greatly disturbed by the lack of attention paid to them by others around me. Photographing children is my way of hopefully having people approach their fellow man with a different perspective, realizing that the homeless man on the street was once (still is) someone’s son.

        Hopefully this’ll clear some things up for you. :)

        • @Jenny, these are nice pictures, and your ideas are fitting. But have you thought of putting a statement about this series on your site? It would help the viewer.

          • @Paul, that’s not a bad idea. I will see about doing just that!

Comments are closed for this article!