Exposed DC

for the love of DC photography

2016 Best in Show Winner: Andrew Golda

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Reflections on a Haircut by Andrew Golda
Reflections on a Haircut by Andrew Golda

Today is the final of our five Best In Show prize winners for the 10th annual Exposed DC Photography Show. We invited each member of a panel of distinguished D.C. metro-area photographers to choose their favorite photograph from the 47 in this year’s exhibit. The five winning photographers will each receive a $100 cash prize from Exposed DC.

We’ll be announcing the winners each day this week. Advance tickets are still available for the opening reception next Thursday, March 10!

Our final winning photograph is “Reflections on a Haircut” by Andrew Golda, chosen by Lucian Perkins. Golda’s image is a wonderfully layered creation. The two men are sharing a serene moment in a barbershop, but the details of the scene and the reflection add a layer of visual noise. Golda shows us a moment we’ve all experienced, the peaceful, intimate moment in our loud and bustling city.

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Lucian Perkins is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (1995 and 2000) who worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post for 27 years. In 1996, his photograph of a boy in war-torn Chechnya was awarded World Press Photo of the Year, and in 1994 he was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year by National Press Photographers Association. Most of his work has been in the United States, but he has also covered wars in the former Yugoslavia, Russia, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, Perkins is an independent photographer living in Washington, D.C.

2016 Best in Show Winner: Kevin Wolf

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Second Coming by Kevin Wolf
Second Coming by Kevin Wolf

Today we have the fourth of our five Best In Show prize winners for the 10th annual Exposed DC Photography Show. We invited a panel of distinguished D.C. metro-area photographers to each choose their favorite photograph from the 47 in this year’s exhibit. The five winning photographers will each receive a $100 cash prize from Exposed DC.

We’ll be announcing the winners each day this week. You can still grab advance tickets for the opening reception next Thursday, March 10!

Our fourth winning photo is “Second Coming” by Kevin Wolf. A well manicured golf course is a bizarre place for a nuclear blast, but luckily Wolf was there to capture it. This photo is actually of overexposed fireworks, but the choices Wolf made – like only showing the backs of peoples’ heads – create a wonderful, science fiction like scene. The full range of grays add a peaceful quality to an image filled with doom.

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Lauren Stockbower has worked as a picture editor for the last twenty years, including for The New York Times, Forbes, Business Week, and U.S. News & World Report. Previously, she worked as both a staff newspaper photographer in the Philadelphia area and also as a freelancer throughout Asia for eight years.

An educator, she taught at the Corcoran College of Art + Design for ten years, and also at CDIA in Georgetown. She is currently an adjunct professor at NOVA in Alexandria, VA in the photography + media department. She also freelances as a picture editor for clients such as National Geographic Traveler, USA Today and The Nature Conservancy. She is also currently Portfolio Director for UFolios.com.

2016 Best in Show Winner: Chris Suspect

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Untitled by Chris Suspect
Untitled by Chris Suspect

Today is the third of our five Best In Show prize winners for the 10th annual Exposed DC Photography Show. We invited each member of a panel of distinguished D.C. metro-area photographers to choose their favorite photograph from the 47 in this year’s exhibit. The five winning photographers will each receive a $100 cash prize from Exposed DC.

We’ll be announcing the winners each day this week. Advance tickets are still available for the opening reception next Thursday, March 10!

Our third winner is “Untitled” by Chris Suspect, chosen by judge Susana Raab. Suspect’s image, like many of his photos, is a study in composition. The woman at the center of the photo is surrounded by a spiral of chaos, chairs and tables strewn about, and children in various stages of apparent meltdown. Her outfit and pose would be more fitting on a Caribbean beach, but instead she is the calm at the center of a very colorful storm.

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Susana Raab was born in Lima, Peru and raised throughout the United States. She is a fine-art and documentary photographer working in Washington, D.C., creating personal work in addition to working as the photographer of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, documenting the East of the River communities in the city.

The heart of her work is a search for the quotidian, archetypical and ordinary: man’s relationship with his environment, identity within that construct, and transcendence or evolution. Susana’s work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, at venues including: the Corcoran Museum of Art, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Madrid, the Pingyao Photo Festival, Noorderlicht Fotofestival in the Netherlands, and the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C.

Susana has been the recipient of the White House News Photographers’ Project Grant, a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowship, Honorable Mentions in Center’s Project Competition and Curator’s Choice Awards, and a Puffin Grant, among others. Her work is held in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History, The Library of Congress, Division of Prints & Photographs, The Art Museum of the Americas, The EnFoco Collection, and the DC Public Art Bank.

2016 Best in Show Winner: Arpita Upadhyaya

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Ah, That Morning Light by Arpita Upadhyaya
Ah, That Morning Light by Arpita Upadhyaya

Now for the second of our five Best In Show prize winners for the 10th annual Exposed DC Photography Show. We invited each member of a panel of distinguished D.C. metro-area photographers to choose their favorite photograph from the 47 in this year’s exhibit. The five winning photographers will each receive a $100 cash prize from Exposed DC.

We’ll be announcing the winners each day this week. Advance tickets are still available for the opening reception next Thursday, March 10!

Today’s Best in Show winner is “Ah! That Morning Light!” by Arpita Upadhyaya. Her photo was chosen by judge Yodith Dammlash. On the surface Upadhyaya’s photo is a simple scene of two people traveling via Metro, one which occurs thousands of times a day, every day. When you look a little deeper though, you see the contrast in the subjects. Beyond the obvious differences in race and gender, the two riders are experiencing their trip in very different ways. The man is consuming media — both the newspaper and audio via his headphones — occupying his mind with outside influences. The seemingly meditative pose of the woman conveys that her mind is occupied from within, enveloped in her own thoughts. These differences are further shown with their distinctive body language. The result is two people who may be extremely close in proximity, but are very dissimilar in many other ways. Enjoy more of Arpita’s work on her Flickr  and Instagram feeds.

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Yodith Dammlash is a photographer and archivist based in the D.C. Metropolitan area. She received her BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Yodith’s professional and artistic works have been featured in exhibitions and in online and print publications, most recently Nueva Luz Photographic Journal and Rooted In Magazine. Her photo-based work explores her own Ethiopian-American ancestry through the lenses of womanhood and collective memory.

2016 Best in Show Winner: Messay Shoakena

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Union Station by Messay Shoakena
Union Station by Messay Shoakena

Thursday, March 10 is the big opening night for our 10th Annual Exposed DC Photography Show. Advance tickets are still available, so grab yours soon! Every year we ask a panel of distinguished, local judges to select one image each for a Best in Show award — no easy task when you consider the diversity and strength on display in this, our 10th anniversary exhibit. The winning photographers will each receive a $100 cash prize from Exposed DC. Our 2016 panel consists of five judges, and this week we’ll be announcing one winner every day, starting today with  “Union Station” by Messay Shoakena, selected by judge Carolyn Russo.

Shoakena’s photo stands out thanks to its expert use of late day light, symmetry, and perfect timing. Waiting for the subject to be framed by the lower wedge of light, while carefully composing the picture with an equally balanced light above, allows the illusion of an image within an image. See more of Messay’s photographs on his website.

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Carolyn Russo is a photographer and museum specialist for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. As a photographer Russo develops photography books and exhibitions. For her most recent book and exhibition Art of the Airport Tower, she traveled to twenty-two countries to explore and photograph over 85 contemporary and historical air traffic control towers.

She is the author of four books: Art of the Airport Tower (Smithsonian Books, Fall 2015), In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight (powerHouse Books, 2007), Artifacts of Flight (Harry N. Abrams, 2003), and Women and Flight: Portraits of Contemporary Women Pilots (Bulfinch Press, 1997). Her photographs have been widely exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Finland, and China and have appeared in numerous publications including the National Geographic Traveler, CNN, BBC News, The New York Times, Science, Smithsonian Magazine, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She has lectured internationally and was an invited participant on the Speaker’s Program with the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Finland and the Smithsonian Journey’s Lecture Program in the Amazon, Brazil.