Theo Rigby Essay
Theo Rigby, May 5, 2003
So the judging is finished. Europe and Latin America today. Everyone was looking for something they’ve never seen. Either a subject that hasn’t been done or a novel approach to an old idea. The whole package has to be clearly effective in both text and photographs. So many entries were plagued with an imbalance in the unity of an inventive idea, following through with that idea in a novel photographic approach, and making those photographs exquisite. Entries faulted at all three points. Sometimes at the conception of the story, although the ideas of the projects were usually sound, most faulted at the realization of the conception in a visual form. The combination of all the variants rarely came together, and when they did the judges were elated. It was mostly, “great idea but bad photographs”, or “nice pictures, but what the hell does this have to do the proposal”. I quickly came to the realization of how few resources most foreign photographers have to help them along the treacherous road of life as a witness. Often the passion, access, idea, and everything essential to the story was there and you can see this person cares so much about the message, but the pictures just didn’t convey what was in the photographers head. If these photographers had access to things like 50 crows, “liberal” press, other photographer’s work, and most importantly a circle of talented, open minded, progressive people surrounding them; these flawed essays would become amazing.
My knowledge of how a photographic essay works is ridiculously larger than three days ago. I just looked at my asthma project and it’s a different group of photographs than it was a few days ago. Shit. I wish the judging never happened. Not really, it’s just a process and this equates to growing pains. The only catch is that the growing pains don’t stop until this life does, and if the pains do stop, that’s when something is really wrong. For some of these photographers this process has been going for decades, the proposal says it has been going for 22 years, the judge looks at it… nope. On to the next. Someone’s hard work, determination, and passion for 22 years just got discounted in 20 seconds. Sometimes the judges would only look at the first four photographs and make the decision. Damn.
This life as a photographer, the one that hasn’t really started, the one that keeps me up at night as my mind races to explain what hasn’t happened yet, the one that I anxiously want so badly to happen that sometimes I have to jump up and down or sprint down the block to stand the slow passing of seconds. It’s not about the Fifty Crows IFDP, or the $7,000, or a Guggenheim, a Smith grant, your pictures published in a magazine, a book, worldwide exhibitions, fame, respect, or the ridiculous politics. It’s the 271 people out of the 288 entrants that get their pictures back in the mail. They imagined that feeling, the bliss that would overcome them. But now, it sits in the mail slot, unopened, and they know. The next day those 271 people pick up their cameras and walk out the door to the world yet to be experienced. Still looking.
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