Deadline for entries: December 7, 2009
In the spirit of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the New Deal in the 1930s, when photographers documented the hardship and proposed solutions, SocialDocumentary.net (SDN) is issuing a Call for Entries. We are looking for photo essays that provide insight into how ordinary citizens around the world are coping during these new “hard times” and how individuals, companies, industries, family businesses, communities, and governments are responding to the crisis.
We encourage a broad definition of the global recession. Suggested stories include those of people losing their jobs, homes, and health benefits; or the effects on vulnerable communities in conflict zones, global climate change; or how the UN’s millennium goals in economic development and health improvement have been stalled by lack of resources. We are also interested in how people and governments are working to overcome these challenges in creative ways such as agricultural development; wind, solar and other alternative energies; public health programs to stop the spread of disease; or technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gases and dependence on oil. These are just examples. We welcome new stories and approaches to documenting this important topic. If photographers are not sure if their stories fit into our definition of the global recession, they are encouraged to inquire at info@socialdocumentary.net.
First Place: One photographer will be awarded:
- A $1,500 cash prize.
- Exhibition of their work in a group show with other winners at powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, NY, from February 15 to March14, 2010. SDN to pay for all reproduction, and hanging fees.
- Invitation to participate on a panel discussion at the opening night reception at powerHouse Arena on February 16, 2010. (photographer will need to cover their travel expenses).
- Exhibit featured in exhibition catalog printed by Meridian Printing, the leading printer of photography books in North America.
- A featured exhibit on the SDN home page for two weeks and features in email spotlights.
- A LowePro Vertex 300 AW backpack.
Honorable Mention: Three photographers will be awarded:
- Exhibition of some of their winning work at powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, NY in a group show from February 15-March 14, 2010. SDN to pay for all reproduction, and hanging fees.
- Exhibit included in exhibition catalog.
- Winning work featured on the website of SocialDocumentary.net and in email spotlights.
- A LowePro Fastpack 350 backpack.
First Place and Honorable Mention exhibits will be published in a catalog that will be available for sale at powerHouse books, launched at the opening reception on February 16, 2010. Competition winners will each receive five complimentary copies.
The People's Choice Awards
This award is based on total number of viewers to a competition entry. Photographers can promote their sites through their own websites, their Facebook page, Twitter, and other sources so that their total number of viewers is increased.
- First Place: People's Choice Award. Adobe Photoshop Extended, for Mac or Windows
- Second Place: People's Choice Award: Adobe Lightroom 2, for Mac or Windows
$35 for one exhibit entry of 6 – 36 images.
A limited number of partial scholarships are available for residents of developing countries. To apply, photographer must first have or create a free membership with SocialDocumentary.net. Send request to scholarship@socialdocumentary.net with name, email address used for membership, your country of residence and your country of citizenship. All requests for discounts must be submitted by November 15, 2009, and exhibits must be submitted by November 22. Expatriates from developed countries living in a developing country are not eligible for scholarships.
All fees must be paid using a credit card on the SDN website. International credit cards are accepted. All entry submissions and fees are final and non-refundable.
All entries are automatically and simultaneously submitted for exhibition on the SocialDocumentary.net website and must follow all rules and regulations regarding exhibits on SDN. See SDN website for further information on fees. www.socialdocumentary.net
Exhibits on SocialDocumentary.net need to be approved before going live (click here for more information). In the event that an entry to the Call for Entries is not accepted for the SDN website, the photographer may make changes to their exhibit and re-submit, at no additional cost, up until the entry deadline.
Photographers can submit multiple contest entries but individual photographs may only be submitted for one entry.
All entries will be viewable to the public on the SDN site.
All entries must have between 6 and 36 photographs related to a specific story about the global recession, have an abstract to provide context (150 words maximum) and captions to accompany the photographs. Photographer may also submit additional text about the situation being documented, a bio, and information on organizations working with affected communities.
Only the first 9 images, captions, and abstract will be review by judges, but photographer can submit up to 36 images that will be part of their online exhibit.
Photographs must have been taken after January 1, 2008.
All work must be submitted via the SocialDocumentary.net website at http://www.socialdocumentary.net.
All contest entries must be accompanied by full name of the photographer and contact information, including email address and phone number. Minimum of six images is required with abstract and captions.
Winning entries must be able to provide within 7 days of award announcement digital files of at least 3000 pixels in one dimension. Exact specifications on providing digital files for exhibition will be provided at a later date.
All entries and communications from entrants must be in the English language.
SocialDocumentary.net will cover all costs associated with printing and mounting of photographs for the exhibition at powerHouse Arena.
Traveling Exhibition
SocialDocumentary.net is making plans to bring the exhibit to the Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University in Chicago in the fall of 2010 and is negotiating other locations as well.
SDN reserves the right to use alternate judges if necessary. The decision of judges is final. Judges will give equal attention to the photographs and the text. Judges will review up to 9 images for any entry.
Lori Grinker
Lori Grinker began her photographic career in 1981 while a student at Parsons School of Design when Inside Sports published her photo-essay about a young boxer as its cover story. During that time she met another young boxer, 13 year-old Mike Tyson, who she documented for the following decade. Since then, in addition to her reportage of events such as the destruction of the World Trade Center, she has delved into several long-term projects, and published two books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (Jewish Publication Society, 1989, 6 editions), and Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO, 2004).
Published in major magazines, her work has earned international recognition, garnering a World Press Photo Foundation Prize, an Open Society Institute Distribution grant, a W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund fellowship, the Ernst Hass Grant, The Santa Fe Center for Photography Project Grant, and a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, among others. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world and are in many private and museum collections including: The International Center of Photography (ICP), The Jewish Museum in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Between editorial assignments, commercial jobs (represented by MEO Represents), and personal projects, Grinker lectures, teaches workshops, and is on the faculty of the ICP in New York City. She is represented by the Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York and has been a member of Contact Press Images since 1988. Grinker is on the advisory committee of SocialDocumentary.net.
www.lorigrinker.com
Ed Kashi
Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times.
Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His innovative approach to photography and filmmaking produced the Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling has been shown in many film festivals and as part of a series of exhibitions on the Iraq War at The George Eastman House.
An eight-year personal project completed in 2003, Aging in America: The Years Ahead, created a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website and a book which was named one of the best photo books of 2003 by American Photo. Along with numerous awards, including honors from Pictures of the Year International, World Press Foundation, Communication Arts and American Photography, Kashi’s editorial assignments and personal projects have generated four books. In 2008, his latest books will be published, both by powerHouse Books; Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta and Three.
“Ed Kashi is intelligent, brave and compassionate. He always understands the nuances of his subjects. He fearlessly goes where few would venture. And he sympathetically captures the soul of each situation. Ed is one of the best of a new breed of photojournalistic artists.” David Griffin, Director of Photography, National Geographic
Kashi is on the advisory committee of SocialDocumentary.net.
www.edkashi.com
Lucian Perkins
Lucian Perkins, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in biology. He later studied photography with Garry Winogrand. In 1997, he received an internship at the Washington Post, where he worked as a staff photographer for 27 years. He received the “Newspaper Photographer of the Year” by the National Press Photographers Association in 1994 for a portfolio that includes projects in Russia and a behind-the-scenes look at the New York fashion shows. In 1995, with Post reporter Leon Dash, he won a Pulitzer Prize for their four-year study on the effects of poverty on three generations of a Washington, DC family through the eyes of their family’s matriarch Rosa Lee Cunningham.
In 1996 he was awarded the World Press Photo of the Year for his photograph of a young boy in war-torn Chechnya. In 2000, Perkins won another Pulitzer Prize along with two colleagues at the Post for their coverage of the Kosovo conflict. While at the Post, Perkins covered major international events, including Russia since 1988, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also chronicled local and national events throughout the US. In October 1998, Chronicle Books published his first book, Runway Madness.
www.lucianperkins.com
Shahidul Alam
Shahidul Alam was born in 1955 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He studied and taught chemistry in London where he obtained a PhD from the University of London.
He started photographing in 1980 and was awarded the Harvey Harris Trophy for being judged the best photographer of the year by the London Arts Council and became the President of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, where he served for three terms.
In 1989, he set up Drik picture library and Pathshala: South Asian Institute of Photography. He is also a director of Chobi Mela, the festival of photography in Asia. He was a jury member of numerous competitions including World Press Photo, where he has been a judge on four occasions and he was the first person of colour to chair the international jury in World Press Photo.
Awarded the Andrea Frank Foundation Award and the Howard Chapnick Award in 1998, he has also been awarded the Honorary Fellowships of the Bangladesh Photographic Society and later, the Royal Photographic Society in 2001, for his contribution to photography.
He is on the advisory board for the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and the National Geographic Society. He is visiting professor of Sunderland University in the UK and Regent's Lecturer at UCLA in the US. Alam is the founder and chairman of Majority World, a global community interest initiative formed to provide a platform for indigenous photographers, photographic agencies, and image collections from the majority world to gain access to global image markets.
http://shahidul.wordpress.com/
Whitney Johnson
Photo Editor, The New Yorker Magazine
Contest is open to all professional and amateur US and international photographers. SDN staff, volunteer, advisory committee members, judges, and their families are not eligible to enter the competition.
Winner Notification
Winners will be contacted by phone and email by December 16, 2009.
Tax liability in connection with any Prize is the responsibility of the winners.
Important Dates
- Entries accepted on SDN website: September 15, 2009
- Entries deadline: December 7, 2009
- Judging: December 10-13, 2009
- Winners Announced: December 16, 2009
- Opening reception & panel discussion: Tuesday, February 16, 2010
- New York Exhibition: powerHouse Arena, February 15-March 14, 2010
- Chicago Exhibition: Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University, September - December, 2010. These dates may be subject to change.
Use Rights
All entrants and winners retain copyright of their work. By submission for jurying, photographers whose images are chosen grant SDN a royalty-free license to use their images for the purpose of subsequent display on the SDN site or in SDN promotional materials. Entries grant SDN the right to use their name for promotion in any medium including radio, newspapers, publications, television, videotape, and/or distribution over the internet. Samples of the winning work will be released to the press for promotional purposes. Photographers grant use of their images as stated without further contact or compensation from SDN other than the prizes listed above. Photographer’s credit will be provided with all use. Winners grant SDN the right to use the work in a related exhibition gallery book and in a possible traveling exhibition.
Print Sales
Winning photographers must provide a list of work and sale price. For the first exhibition at powerHouse Arena, February 15-March 14, 2009, sales of prints will be split 40% to photographer, 40% to powerHouse, 20% to SDN. Sales are arranged through powerHouse and the work sold will be the exact work on the wall. SDN will pay the photographers. Other sizes can be negotiated with buyer. SDN pays for the printing and mounting of the work for first exhibition. Arrange of sale of work at other exhibit locations to be determined.
Release
Entrant acknowledges that SDN may not be held liable for any loss, damages, or injury associated with this contest. Entrant agrees to indemnify SDN for all costs, damages and attorney fees resulting from any third party claims, including copyright infringement, arising from entrant’s participation.
SDN reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to disqualify any entrant that fails to comply with contest rules and guidelines. This Contest is void where prohibited by law.
SocialDocumentary.net (SDN) uses the power of photography to promote global awareness. SDN members include photographers, NGOs, journalists, editors, and students who create and explore documentary websites investigating critical issues facing the world today. Recent exhibits have explored oil workers in the Niger River Delta, male sex workers in India, Central American immigrant women during their journey north, and Iraqi and Afghan refugees in Greece.
