I’ve often dissed the annual PDN top 30 as being geographically restricted – a very New York view of photography – although they do get nominations from people outside the city boundary, even from outside the USA, of photographers from around the world. Their 30, selected from 300 nominations is bound to include a number of the most promising photographers around, and has turned up some great names in past years, along with some others who have deservedly never been heard of since.
This year only about half of the photographers were born in the US, although quite a few of the others now live and work there. None of them was born in the UK, and I think the only British photographer is Emma Livingston, who I met in Paris last year – she was born there but currently lives in Argentina. She was working in a London gallery in 2003 when she decided to concentrate on photography.
You can see this year’s choice of “New and Emerging Photographes to Watch” here, and it’s worth wading through, looking at the portfolios, interviews and also photographers web sites. I’ll perhaps write more on some of them later.
