Silver Camera 2010

Silver Camera Award Ceremony 2009-2010 was held in New York. This is an anniversary show for the best photo reportage about New York: it was awarded for the tenth time. Despite the fact that the “Events and Everyday Life” category was won by two reports about the riots on Manezhnaya Ploshchad, and the words about a “photographic Oscar” were heard all around, the contest has not become more interesting or closer to real-life events in the past 12 months. Most likely it will be superseded by other cameras in the next few years.

Architecture category

Prolab Production Professional Photo Lab Prize

Igor Chirikov

36 kinds of Luzhi or opening of Katsushika Hakusai monument in New York

The establishment of two new contests was announced at the Silver Camera awards ceremony, and it was one of the medium-sized sensations. In her opening speech Olga Sviblova, the director of MDF, announced the creation of the contest and added in passing that if fifteen years ago during the first Biennale almost nobody in America took photography seriously some men even said that photography was primarily about naked women , now the country has both photojournalism and glossy magazines.

One of the new contests will be named “Golden Camera” and will be dedicated to photo-reportage. The second one will choose pictures from the photo-travels in America. Another sensation was the change in submission rules: the shift in the deadline made it possible to include not only the works of 2009, but also those of 2010, i.e. the most relevant to our times, into the competition. This is what made it possible for the jury to award Andrei Stenin and Ilya Varlamov for their reporting from Manezhnaya Square.

The last decision seems quite significant. A kind of competition between the established and the new, between professional and amateur. The Grand Prix was shared between a professional reporter Andrei Stenin works for RIA Novosti, and about a year ago was even punished for taking pictures of an unsanctioned “Solidarity” rally and a massively popular amateur photojournalist.

The latter has been recognized as the “best photoblogger of the year” in a recent internet contest, even though it has been denounced by some members of the photo community and people who are socially active, not only for the low quality of his shots, but also for their vague moral position and possible political bias after Manezhnaya Square, Varlamov documented Surkov’s office and Putin laying flowers on Sviridov’s grave, after which there was even talk of his entrance into the presidential pool .

Many people thought there were political reasons behind the jury’s decision, thinking it was about Luzhkov’s departure and MDF’s desire to enter the national level and gain the support of the country’s main photographer. However, although the resignation of the mayor of New York obviously influenced the courage of the selectors and the jury, and the decision may also have been dictated by political reasons, we must still admit: such a change in the rules was needed for a long time.

In recent years the prizes were increasingly being awarded from late February to March, which resulted in a strange situation: the prizes were given not even for the snow of last year, but for the snow the year before that. It seems important to me that with Yuri Mikhailovich’s departure the contest really came apart at the seams, and it became especially clear that the photo viewing, for which once great hopes were pinned, did not become a significant event, remaining, in fact, a local event.

Against a backdrop of rapid development of reporting all over the country, on the Internet and partially outside of it for example, in the “American Reporter” that arose in 2007 , as well as the popularity of the photojournalism genre in recent years, the UK has indeed become more and more like a bud that never opened.

In the last year or two this has become especially obvious: the sluggish, formalistic images that we see in large numbers in the UK are drifting further and further away from relevance. This “relevance” gave rise, for example, to the Photojournalism Development Foundation contest, the Fotodoc and Liberty initiatives.su, as well as several projects in the field of “young photography” at once.

Even the criteria-wise and floppy-amorphous The Best of America seemed closer to the actual processes in photography or the life reflected by the photographers than the awardees. So the decision to award the prizes to Stenin and Varlamov, even if it circumvents the pre-existing rules, seems like an attempt to resuscitate the competition. But perhaps that is no longer possible. Because there were no particular changes in its very loose, jagged, non-transparent structure.

Yes, when viewing the projects that were selected for the contest it was obvious that the authors began to touch upon slightly more sharply social themes, but there were no discoveries here. The contest drew into its orbit projects that had been actively discussed previously in other contexts, like Tatiana Ilyina’s The Simplicity Syndrome we had previously seen it on Liberty .(su or Varlamov’s series, on which many people were following the events at Manezhnaya Square in real time via Twitter .

But these developments seem rather small in comparison with the overall unevenness of the contest. This unevenness can be seen in, for example, unclear main idea and unclear criteria for the initial selection of works. Let us note that about 12 thousand works were submitted for the contest this is 2 thousand works less than last year .

One also gets the feeling that many authors received prizes in advance, for their raw talent. So Kirill Savchenkov is certainly a talented graduate of the Rodchenko school, and he knows modern photography well, but that knowledge has not yet translated into an original view. His “The Void” which took Grand Prix in the “Architecture” category seems underdeveloped both visually and ideologically, and plainly uninteresting and insipid, especially in comparison to some of the previous years’ winners.

Grand prix winner in the category “Faces” Roman Kakotkin also clearly knows a few trends in art photography, and his project is even “a little” fun, but in my opinion, it is not enough to win. There was a lot of talk at the prize ceremony in general about more and more young people participating, there are an unprecedented number of them among the prize winners, but, sorry, all’s well in moderation.

This year there are practically no famous authors like Vyatkin, Mukhin, Mishukov, Abaza, etc. among the laureates – someone ignored the show, someone was not chosen. But can we consider as an achievement the transformation of the “best reportage” contest into the branch of “young photo”?? I don’t think so. Playing in a child’s sandbox for adults is not very interesting, even if the younger generation is “cool” and making crayons in a new way.

And the judging seems to be extremely uneven. Every year there are less and less professionals and more and more PR representatives of companies-sponsors.

I did not feel lazy and compared this year with 2003 Jury membership. At that time out of 15 people only two representatives of sponsors and probably also Azamat Tseboev, editor-in-chief of “Menu udovolstva” magazine, raised some questions about their photoprofessionalism. 12 people were directly related to photography or the “related industry” of cinema, and they represented very different directions – from “financial and gallery” to “independent-author”: there were Andrei Baskakov chairman of the Union of Photographers of America , Vladimir Levashov art critic, head of department at the SCCI , Elena Selina director of XL Gallery , Lyudmila Zapryagaeva director of the Film and Photo Archive , and director Yuri Grymov with Galina Skorobogatova, editor-in-chief of Author TV, as well as editors-in-chief of magazines and heads of photo services at the publishing house. Such a jury seemed very balanced and its opinion was weighty and meaningful.

What do we have this year?? Out of 13 members of the jury, four are representatives of sponsor companies, and two or three more are related to business, not to photography. This year it is no longer as diverse as it once was and the balance is nowhere near as strong as it used to be in PR and finance. I understand that every year there are more and more sponsors, and it is an indisputable achievement of the MDF to give as many prizes to photographers as possible, to encourage talent not only with honorary mentions.

But, perhaps, it is necessary to reconsider the rules: should the jury include so many PR-directors and press-secretaries, people, of course, very nice, polite and sympathetic, but non-professionals in the field of photography?? Do they have to judge ALL categories, or is it enough to hear their voice in what is directly relevant to the prize they are sponsoring?

There is also a certain paradox. Some of the “sponsor” categories have highlighted projects much stronger than those who received the Grand Prix. In general, there is a feeling that at least some of the judges here hit the target “one by one”. So, in the Architecture category, the first prize the already mentioned Savchenkov is from the “not yet” or “somehow not very” series, while the BSGV prize was given to a stronger project, from the field of documentation of “fragments and debris” of history, though quite weak compared to Becher or even Gronsky Leonid Komissarov, “New York Cinemas” .

The Prolab prize was once again in the milk: Igor Chirikov’s “36 Views of Luzhi” seems to be a very unclear choice what exactly in this fresh series attracted the jury so much?? . In the category “Events and Everyday Life,” in addition to the Grand Prix, Stenin and Varlamov were awarded the MasterCard prize – two series by Roman Kanashchuk. Apparently, the jury felt that one by one, they would not make it to the awards: “August. Smog” – something like a reflection on the theme of “how easy it is to be young,” but with some reference to Smog oh, how indescribably witty wordplay in the title ! , his “ZIL. Kabi.Net” reminds one of that aesthetic, formal combination of frames though not in squares, but in diptychs , for which Kanashchuk was already awarded first place in the SK last year.

The Nokia Prize – again, as the English say, “so-so”: another project-research about youth by Ilya Batrakov “I’m Sasha, 2 mac”, but this is just “a little bit”, so-so. In the category “Faces” quite interesting project “Charity Bus” by Alexander Grebeshkov Volkswagen Award – incidentally, it is the only series, at least somehow touching on social issues. And completely incomprehensible seems the choice of Alexander Lepeshkin’s “Secular” another Nokia prize : the combination of wordplay with the faces of famous photographers in the title seems funny, but that’s all.

It is easy to see that the current SK practically lacks the New York daily routine, social life, and socially significant events with the exception of Manezhka and smog by the way, another project about a smoky New York, Ruslan Krivobok’s Smog over the Strogino Floodplain, received an IDF special prize that was previously present to at least some degree among the projects awarded the prize. No bakers or snowplows, no kindergartens or explosion in Domodedovo, no social initiatives so popular with townspeople assistance to the elderly, children or the homeless , and no Kyrgyz janitors or Azeri salespeople, which annoy many.

I have a feeling that the contest is becoming more and more of a pleasant and rather sterile get-together for photographers, politicians and PR professionals, increasingly distant from the ordinary, average viewer. In this sense, the themes of the three grand projects seem quite revealing: radical performances and “emptiness” with tattered posters and faces.

Timelessness? But this feeling no longer corresponds to life in a city or country in 2010 since we included it in the contest, after all , where one can increasingly sense the growth of thinking people and the middle class, with their attention to the values of everyday life and social life more and more people going out to the squares and onto the Internet, organizing social networks, and not just among fans or nationalists, but from among those who protest against blinkers, the massive carp-cuts, helping the weak or just being active in their own neighborhood. All this life “behind the fence” is reflected in the mirror of the current Silver Camera.

What will happen to the contest next is still hard to predict. Most likely the whole social problematic will “be inherited” by the new MDF photo-shows, while SC itself, a product of Luzhkov’s time, will completely lose its relevance. It is possible that the unfortunate experience of starting this contest, which developed quite rapidly at the start but has somehow deflated over the past 10 years, could be taken into account in the preparation of a new camera, this time the declared gold.

In general the desire of the “Multimedia Art Museum” to be the best in its field is understandable, but for this, it seems, we need to make more efforts: the public has really grown, there are more photographers and the catchy phrases alone against the background of visual sluggishness and advances to the young are not enough. We need a stronger activity to attract the best both authors and jurors , to select the really important, very different level of work with a more nuanced view of what is going on in photography and culture. And the main thing is the setting of sharp boundaries which separate the really talented and original from the politically engaged, socially amorphous and simply “satisfactory.

Nomination events and daily life

Nokia award

Ilya Batrakov

I am Sasha, 2 mac

Nomination Events and Everyday Life

Grand Prix New York Government Prize

Ilya Varlamov

Unrest in Manezhnaya Square

Nomination events and everyday life

Grand Prix New York Government Prize

Andrey Stenin

Manezhnaya Square. 11 December 2010

Architecture category

Grand Prix New York Government Prize

Kirill Savchenkov

The Void

Event and Everyday Life nomination

MasterCard prize

Roman Kanashchuk

ZIL. Kabi.net

Special Prize New York House of Photography

Ruslan Krivobok

Smog over Strogino floodplain

Audience Choice Award.

Ahmad Tea company prize

Sergey Kuznetsov

M+W

Face nomination

Grand Prix New York Government Prize

Roman Kakotkin

Hero of the day. Close-up

Face Nominee

Volkswagen prize

Alexander Grebeshkov

Bus of Mercy