Ted Grant once said, "When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their soul”. This couldn’t resonate more with the Black and White Photo Awards (B&WPA) 2023. This year's list of winners has just been unveiled with submissions of monochromatic imagery surpassing expectations.
Open to photographers from across the globe, the B&WP announced the winners on August 19th which just so happened to be World Photography Day. A record breaking 1,700 photographers from 92 countries entered around 3,000 stunning images across five categories; architecture, street, portrait, fauna and flora and landscape.
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Patrice Quillard from Froberville, France is recognized as the "Absolute Winner" with his stunning work titled My Copyright. Quillard's capture immortalized a gelada, an elegant primate with a captivating gaze staring right down the barrel of the lens. On capturing the image he explained, "For a fleeting moment, he turned towards me, locking me in his intense gaze, and I comprehended the sheer dominance he held over his troop. It was an unforgettable instant—a snapshot of the essence I sought to capture."
Ágnes Dudás secured the Special Creativity Award for her photograph Painted Portrait which blurs the lines between two popular mediums of portraying people while Gareth Jones came out on top in the architecture category for an artistic take on futuristic-looking street lights. Joya Saha came first place in Street for her photo Childhood showing children playing with hoops and the Fauna and Flor category was won by Arturo de Frias Marques for an image of seals surrounding a shawl of fish.
Michael Potts won the portrait category with his raw image titled Reflection and Edoradro Frenquelli came first in the landscape category for a well-timed. dramatic shot of fork lightning. In total, the B&WPA handed out $2,500 in prize money to the winners.
The Black and White Photo Awards 2023 also awarded second-place awards for each category, alongside the traditional Gold, Silver, and Bronze Honorable Mentions. The captivating works of the finalists can be admired in the competition's online gallery.
This year's judging panel comprised of Joel Tjintelaar, Julia Anna Gospodarou, Charles Paul Azzopardi, and Kazutoshi Kawakami who expressed their profound admiration for the unprecedented quality of this year's submissions.
Preparations for The Black and White Photo Awards 2024 are already in motion with plans to open for submissions on January 1st.
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