Simon Devitt Prize for Photography
Winner 2016
Jodie Salmond is the winner of the 2016 Simon Devitt Prize for Photography.
The postgraduate student from Elam School of Fine Arts was awarded the 2016 Simon Devitt Prize for Photography, for her series of three images captured using an iPhone.
This year’s theme was ‘a chance encounter’ and Salmond, who is in her final-year of her Masters of Fine Arts (MFA), included two haiku poems as part of her tryptich entitled ‘When I’m night driving’.
Judge Simon Devitt, described Salmond’s work as ‘beguiling and arresting’. When presenting the prize to her he said “the winning work took risks, pairing a familiar night road trip scene with a close up study of an aggregate surface and road markings, which were unsettling in their shift of speed and scale.”
The Simon Devitt Prize for Photography is an annual award to celebrate the best student photograph at the University of Auckland, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries with this year’s theme entitled: A Chance Encounter.
A selection of twenty finalist from seventy entries have been chosen for this year’s exhibition to feature in the Auckland Festival of Photography Fringe Programme. The overall winner will receive the Simon Devitt Prize for Photography Trophy, NZ$1000 and a Canon Power Shot G7X camera.
Thank you to our valued sponsors and partners:
Simon Devitt, Auckland Festival of Photography, Canon and John Leech Framing Workshop
The winner of this years Simon Devitt Prize for Photography competition is Alice O’Brien-Gortner.
The annual competition, now in it’s seventh year, was established at the Auckland School of Architecture and Planning.
O’Brien-Gortner, a third-year Bachelor of Architectural Studies student, receives a trophy and $1000 prize money after her image was chosen from a field of twenty finalists.
This year’s theme was The In-Between and I selected Extinguished as the winning entry because this is where the image seems to live.
There is a highly evocative sense of ‘another’ place we get when we experience this photograph.
O’Brien-Gortner has created an imagined world that perhaps raisers more questions than it answers for the viewer.
Her photograph leaves us in a challenging and uneasy place, wondering how we arrived.
A selection this years best entries are on show until 7 June as part of the Auckland festival of Photography.
The 2014 Simon Devitt Prize for Photography Exhibition
28 May-7 June
Foyer, Conference Centre
The University of Auckland
22 Symonds Street
Samuel Wong is the winner of this years prize for his entry ‘Rider’.
My description of his winning entry:
“The winning photograph left me in no doubt. Its a picture I wish I had made myself. The sense of the uncanny, the surreal and a poetic nod to the theme are all captivating characteristics of the winning photograph. The winning entry reveals a deceptively ambiguous narrative that held my attention and begged re-visiting. Its success rests, uneasily in between the everyday and the otherworldly.”
Elam Projectspace Gallery • 19 June – 22 June
Opens 5.30pm on Tuesday 18 June
Hours 11am – 4pm Wed-Sat
Where 20 Whitaker Place, Auckland
Artists Architecture Students of Auckland University
Theme Fringe
This prize, established in the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland in 2008, is awarded annually in recognition of the best student photograph in Architecture. The 2013 theme is ‘Subterranean.’
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09 373 7559 ext 81682 |
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creative.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/elam-projectspace |
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www.photographyfestival.org.nz
Photo: Zee Shake Lee, 2012 Winner
