I learn from PDN Online that the not-for-profit public service organization, CENTER, founded in 1994 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has recently announced its 2012 winners of its various prizes. Center’s tag-line is ‘Exposing Great Photography’ and says that it “honors, supports, and provides opportunities to gifted and committed photographers” through its programme.
Both in the judging panel and in the awards there is a certain British interest, with the top award (and a $10,000 prize) in the Project competition going to English/Swedish documentary photographer and member of VII Anastasia Taylor-Lind for her fine project ‘The National Womb’ on the Nagorno Kabakh’s government birth encouragement programme.
The web site shows work by various photographers who won awards in the five different competitions run by CENTER, and there is plenty of other interesting work. A second fine set of work in the Project competition was Pablo Martínez‘s ‘The Line’, but work from the other competitions – Project Launch, Curators Choice, Editor’s Choice, and Gallerist’s Choice is also worth looking at, although rather varied, and including some that had me thinking that perhaps it just doesn’t come over on the web. And genuinely there are some things that don’t work at small scale on a screen.
On the site you can also see work by the winner of the biennial Santa Fe prize, entry to which is by nomination from “approximately 100 industry leaders including representatives from National Geographic, TIME magazine, Art Institute of Chicago” and also carries a $10,000 prize. You need to go to her own web site to see more of her work as the couple of images on the CENTER site really give very little idea of it.