This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – World Press Photo shifts to a regional format, the Bronx Documentary Center celebrates 10 years, plus a new Gordon Parks exhibition.
World Press Photo Contest – New Regional Format
From 2022, World Press Photo will shift to a regional format for its annual competition in a bid to increase cultural diversity, although gender diversity is still an issue as the most recent winners of Photo of the Year demonstrate.
World Press Photo is also ditching its Digital Storytelling Contest after 11 years. However, those who are a working in the digital storytelling space can enter in the new Open Format category.
The regions are: Africa, Asia, Europe North and Central America, South America, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The new categories are: Singles, Stories, Long-Term Projects and Open Format.
Anna Lena Mehr, the Contest Director for World Press Photo explains how the new regional format will work. “In each region, a selection of entries per category will be chosen by a regional jury, composed of professionals from and/or working in that region, with a range of expertise. With the knowledge of the region that each jury member will possess, they will be well equipped to judge the stories and be able to put them into a cultural, political and social context.”
You can read more here. Entries for the 2022 competition open on December 1, 2021 and close in mid-January 2022.
Bronx Documentary Center – Online Auction
The Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) turns 10 this year and will celebrate this milestone at the conclusion of its 7th Annual Auction being held virtually on Thursday, October 21, 2021. This is a great opportunity for photography lovers from around the globe to pick up a print and support a great endeavour. Exclusive prints are now available for online bidding. Prices start from $175 (USD). Here are a couple of the images on offer.
Photographers include Inbal Abergil, Rodrigo Abd, Johis Alarcón, Trevon Blondet, Victor Blue, Andrea Hernández Briceno, Zana Briski, Andrea Bruce, Marco Breuer, Elinor Carruci, Henry Chalfant, Alejandro Chaskielberg, Serkan Çolak, Jade Doskow, Jesus Emmanuel, Mitch Epstein, Bud Glick, Ashley Gilbertson, George Georgiou, Pieter Hugo, Michael Kamber, Ed Kashi, Richard Koek, Doug Menuez, Kyle Meyer, Martina Mullaney, Fred Ramos, Richard Sandler, Ezra Stoller, Dan Nelken, Robert Nickelsberg, Yael Martínez, Coco McPherson, Susan Meisalas, Daniella Zalcman, and Iva Zimova.
Auction prints are available to bid on through 8:00 PM EST October 21st. The online auction will culminate in a free virtual celebration to celebrate 10 years of the BDC, from 7PM EST to 8PM EST on Thursday, October 21, 2021.
Exhibition:
Gordon Parks: A Choice of Weapons
Gordon Parks, the renowned documentary photographer who shot for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression and was the only African American photographer on the staff at LIFE magazine “for decades” was also a film director. As former LIFE editor-in-chief Bill Schapiro writes in Blind this month, Parks’ most notable film was Shaft, released in 1971. In Shaft, Parks cast Richard Roundtree, an African American, in the lead, making the film a forerunner to the “Blaxploitation” genre.
“To mark the 50th anniversary of this landmark film — one that still crackles in pop culture half a century later — the Howard Greenberg gallery in New York City is staging a smartly conceived exhibition, titled “A Choice of Weapons,” that focuses on Parks’ cinematic approach to photography,” writes Schapiro.
See it at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, 8th Floor, 41 East 57 Street, New York City. Read Schapiro’s article on Blind here.
Photojournalism Now 