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Overview: Naked Judging: The 2012 Canteen Awards in Photography
Other contest links:
Details (prizes, judges, dates)
Entries
Live finale
Canteen magazine is holding our second photography contest because of our general disdain for photography contests. They tend to be opaque affairs that stifle dialogue—the winners are chosen, no one quite knows why, and 99% of the participants are left without their entrance fee or an explanation. The real winners are the organizations that run and profit exorbitantly from them.
We are trying to do something different. Namely, treat our participants as partners. We aim to be fully transparent about the entire selection process, placing the judges’ criteria, biases, and disagreements on full, naked display. The result, we hope, will be an honest and provocative conversation about photography.
To these ends, Naked Judging: The 2012 Canteen Awards in Photography offers several novel features:
- A live finale: The final round of judging, featuring the top 25 submissions, will occur in front of a live audience, and will be simultaneously streamed online. Prior to the winners being selected, audience members (both in-person and online) can probe the judges with questions.
- Every submission openly critiqued: Similar to our first photo contest, brief notes/critiques from all judging rounds will be available on our website for every submission.
- Longer-form critiques: The winning submission and other select submissions will be the subject of longer-form discussions and essays in the next print issue of Canteen magazine, and through this contest’s official partner, Lenscratch. In addition, select participants will be given the opportunity to publicly respond to the judges’ comments.
- Nonprofit model: We are not only providing a low entry fee ($20 for 5 to 8 images, and $15 for students), but we will document on our website how every dollar is spent. At the contest’s conclusion, any profits will be refunded back to the entrants.
We hope not only that our contest will produce a provocative dialogue about photography, but also that it will nudge other organizations into adopting practices that are friendlier to the community of photographers that they purport to represent.
For questions and feedback email Stephen Pierson, Canteen’s Director.
Something doesn’t really fit. You claim this: “All submissions will be judged within a single category. All themes are acceptable, but keep in mind that Canteen is an art publication—so we’re not really looking for adorable pictures of your kittens wearing matching sweaters.” Ok, so you are supposed to be an art publication but you ignore two basic “art photography facts”. 1. a real artistic photograph is almost by definition always part of a series and as such it works just as a puzzle piece forming a large image. As a single image is basically as good as nothing. From the artistic point of view of course. Yet you only want us to send you one single picture!? That’s exactly how those contests looking for adorable pictures of kittens and such work. They only ask you for a single picture. How can you evaluate a single picture which can only show it’s true artistic potential as part of the series? Well, you can’t. So, it’s pretty obvious that this contest will be just like any other. The people of the jury will just apply their taste on photos they will even have no clue about. 2. artist’s statements are optional? that’s quite a joke. So, what is then left of it apart the image that doesn’t really mean much and that is left to a subjective interpretations of people who basically won’t even know what they are judging. And you want to be different? Ah, you are just after money like everyone else.
AB–thanks for taking the time to voice your concerns.
Regarding your first critique about series vs individual photos: We agree, which is why we are only judging photographic series–not individual photos. All submissions must include 5 to 8 photos. Please read the contest “details” section on our website.
Regarding artists’ statements: They will be considered if they are included. If an artist wants their work to speak for itself, without explanation, we believe that this is their right.
Regarding taste: Yes, of course, the jury is simply applying their taste. But we think it’s best to be fully transparent about what their taste and biases are. Hopefully this will be useful for participants to hear. We aren’t holding up our judges’ taste as the only definition of good art–we are hoping that this contest will merely serve as an interesting conversation starter.
Regarding money: No, we are not after money. Read above: We will be fully transparent about how every dollar is spent. Any profit will be refunded to participants.
Thanks for your clarification. The submission manager only allows you to attach one file though so does this mean the 5-8 photos are supposed to be sent in a compressed file (such as zip or rar)?
The point about artistic statements is exactly to prevent that the personal taste becomes more relevant than the achievement of the actual work presented. The point of judging an artwork should not be to apply your taste to it but to evaluate if the idea behind the work was first of all relevant and if it was effectively executed as well. And to be able to do that you need an artistic statement otherwise you can’t really clearly establish what the person was really trying to do and therefore if the person succeed or not in his/her artistic intentions. From my point of view it’s completely pointless if an artwork is going to be judged based on criteria that the artwork wasn’t even trying to meet simply because the member of the jury expects that. They are supposed to judge the quality not their personal taste or expectations. And without a statement they couldn’t do that even if so they wanted (which normally they don’t anyway). because a really honest and relevant judgement is the one which explains you where did you fail regarding what you tried to achieve and not regarding what someone else though you should have done. a very clear example: if I submit a photo on which all composition rules are broken because that’s exactly what I wanted to do yet the judge dismisses it because it breaks the composition rules then that was surely not a fair judgement. A fair judgement would be the one which would explain me why breaking all those rules didn’t have the effect I wanted it to have.
so, excluding the artist statement (making it not obligatory) clearly show that you don’t really care about all these points I mentioned. and of course everyone is free to “let their work speak for itself” but frankly if one can’t put up at least a single sentence about what he/she’s doing then most probably he/she doesn’t know what he/she is actually doing. and ot me that’s bad art. a picture done in such a way of course can still look good, appealing, nice, interesting, inspirational, etc. but it’s just not art. because art is not just doing thing but it’s consciously doing things. and if you are consciously doing something then you should be able to describe it at least a little but. if not we are brought back to people who take those adorable pictures of their kittens wearing matching sweaters. they also “let their pictures speak for itself”.
AB–thanks for again voicing your opinions.
First, apologies for our slightly anachronistic image-upload software, which allows for only a single upload at a time. Which means that, as an entrant, you can either upload a single compressed folder containing your entire series of images, or upload each image individually. If our organization was wealthier, or if we charged a higher entrance fee, we could afford the luxuries of Slideroom…
Next: You make a compelling case for the mandatory inclusion of statements. It was the decision of our three judges to make it optional. I defer to them on these types of issues. In our inaugural 2010 contest we also made it optional; 90% of entrants chose to include them; so, hopefully the issues you raise will be moot.
Feel free to email me with any other suggestions/feedback: stephen at canteenmag dot com
wow AB, you are crazed. surely in this sea of awful, money-gouging contests, you can find many many more appropriate targets for your rage. this one actually has its heart in the right place. nonprofit model and all this transparency… it’s pushing things in the right direction.
I actually am so impressed by your format that I just might enter! Heard about this via APE, by the way…
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It isn’t about the money. It’s about the promotion of the organizers. Which of course will then lead to money. Get It?
Wink, you possibly have some misguided notions about the lucrativeness of running a literary/arts publication along with a tutoring program for kids in Harlem (the two things we do at Canteen). Neither will ever ever be profitable. Or even come close to breaking even. None of us at Canteen have ever been paid for what we do, and none of us ever expect to get paid. We are not without occasional selfish motives or impulses; but money is certainly not one of those.
a discussion about ‘artist statement’ or not seems to me utterly irrelevant if not for conceptual art.
great art from the past speaks to us without any statement at all
we are still able to comprehend and appreciate it..!
all my compliments for the great endeavor here!
sounds amazing, thanks for putting this together again. really enjoyed the process last year.
I applaud your candor and openness with this competition, but your criterion of “single category” was (perhaps purposely?) vague to solicit the widest range of artistic photography.
So, it happens that my submission was artistically in an abstract category, though I was not able to declare that category when submitting.
Submission 7 included two themes within this abstract category, not one i.e. a boat. The first theme I leave to your imagination to determine. Knowledge of Italian would help.
Suffice to say, it was odd for the judge to dismiss images 1 to 5 because, later, they realized (thought) they must be about a boat—which they weren’t…..which means as abstracts, they accomplished their goal.
More clarity in the criterion “single category” is definitely needed next time. Bravo for the concept!
[...] was very intrigued with Canteen Magazine’s Naked Judging: The 2012 Canteen Awards in Photography. So, I entered eight images from my [...]