It is time to reveal the winners of the Conscientious Portfolio Competition 2012. This year, the jury consisted of Michel Mallard (creative director/founder, Michel Mallard Studio), Robert Lyons (photographer; director, Hartford Photography MFA Program), and myself. Without further ado, the winners are…

Robert picked Hye-Ryoung Min’s Channel 247 (see top image):

I first got it down to five different portfolios. But I kept coming back to Hye-Ryoung Min’s, whose work struck me the first time I looked at it, and it has only grown since. The images really suggest time beyond the moment of the picture. They are well composed, and each image suggests an interesting situation. The formal aspects seem to hold the group together. Although at first one feels as if these are “surveillance” images - at least by the framing, and by things that obscure the images - one quickly is able to see how they are much more.

Michel went for Karen Miranda Rivadeneira’s Other Stories/Historias Bravas:

The images which have touched me and attracted me the most are Karen Miranda Rivadeneira’s. I found this series of images very interesting as they are a touching mix of reportage meets fiction meets mise en scene. They are very human as they deal with big general themes such as life, childhood, adolescence, motherhood, death, and at the same time with details and particularities. They are exotic and very personal. I like that the photographic approach is not overstated, it is precise but very simple. Every frame is filled with humanity. I’d like to see many more of them.

Given I was unable to make up my mind between two contenders, I picked them both. The first is Lisa Fairstein’s Ultra-Static:

Photography has finally come full circle so that it can investigate itself and its uses, the latter of course being the aspect where things get interesting. Lisa Fairstein’s Ultra-Static throws the viewer right into a seemingly absurd world, which, however, feels oddly familiar (because it is). Pulling together references from different areas of photography the resulting images offer no relief in the form of advertizing or magazine copy, which would allow us to filter the imagery. Instead, we are left with photography’s artifice, with all that photography is so good at, and bad at.

The second is Olivia Locher’s Another Day on Earth:

With so much talk about photography being over or dead, we might as well admit that it is, have a jazz funeral, and continue enjoying the medium, now more than ever. I think this is what Olivia Locher is doing with Another Day on Earth, fearlessly unafraid to produce pictures that either conform to or subvert standard conventions. Photography is dead - long live photography!

I will conduct interviews with the winners and showcase their work over the following weeks in more detail. Stay tuned…