Foto Forum Santa Fe Award
2024 Honorable Mentions
Bryan Birks
Articles of Virtu
Articles of Virtu is a project centered around men, women, and their relationships with the cars that they own.
A car can transport you to a place or to a memory that you hold close to your heart. In Articles of Virtu, I examine
the relationship between people and these machines.
What started as documentation of the vehicles themselves turned into an evolving project centered around the
people, the environments they live in, and the things they treasure dearly.
Old and young, the people I photograph all have thoughts and ideas about what will come of the things they own.
Conversations around legacy always unfold, and in doing so, just before we part ways, they always end with a
goal of some sort, whether to fix the motor or the chipped paint. They take a small pause, look over the car one
more time, and say, "Maybe one day." We go our separate ways; the car is covered back up, and the only thing
that changed was the sun's position in the sky.
Edwin Carungay
A Great Divide
This series captures a flash - of beloved, community-led celebrations - practiced for generations through a mix of
Catholic and indigenous traditions. These candid moments encompass the traditions' contemporaries reveling
within Oaxaca's communities of Santo Tomás Jalieza, San Martín Tilcajete and Zaachila. This unique time of
each year illuminates the buoyant fellowship and revere of impassioned faith - mostly missing, has been lost, or
never existed north of the border. From sunrise to sunset, the most unique, color-filled acts of devotion, and/or
rebellion blissfully overtakes each of these communities - stoking their emphasis for each generation to come.
Inyang Essien
Sacred Seeds
My ongoing body of work, "Sacred Seeds", explores Black cultural technologies, emphasizing the impact of
fractals which can be found in hairstyles, storytelling rhythms, patterned fabrics and pictographs. These images
represent an intimate look at the fractals that exist in African culture - more specifically the hairstyles. The paths
in the scalp are inspired by what is seen in nature, but communicate a new meaning once it reaches the scalp.
Capitalizing on the flexibility and strength of Black hair, hair thread is used to manipulate the hair into unique
styles. I chose to complement this threaded Nigerian hairstyle with a vibrant backdrop of Ankara -- a wax-style
textile popular among African cultures. These hairstyles and textiles vary in meaning -- some are specific to a
particular region or the status that a woman holds.
Ave Pildas
Paper Movies
Photographer Henri Cartier Bresson emphasized the moment, finding a compelling location and waiting for the
ideal confluence of elements to shoot a good picture. Another crucial concept is sequence, embodied in the style
of Edward Muybridge, Duane Michals and Ray Metzger. Studied together, the two elements reveal the
importance and meaning of capturing movement.
The series "PaperMovies" is a study of my interaction as a photographer and designer with pedestrian traffic. I
choose a location that becomes my set and wait for people to invade. I pick the set or frame based on how
interesting the architecture, background, or people are. Many of the subjects are unaware of my presence, but
some see me and I interact with them by asking them to pose or start a conversation. I then select images that
most strongly reflect the line, pattern and movement of the passing crowd. The result is an image that appears
dynamic, with an energy that lifts off the page.
Laurie Smith
One Landscape Divided/Border Wall-Human Crisis
Being raised in the borderlands of El Paso and Juarez, I have a deeply rooted bi-cultural identity, giving me a
unique perspective on the current immigration crisis at the borderline. While critical issues of human migration
span the globe and more immediately along the 2000-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, my focus is the
microcosm of one landscape now divided, where West Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico meet.
The photographs showcase the tangled reality of what I witness on both sides of the border. I invite people to
experience the border wall up close, from above and from far away.
My intent is to evoke compassion and end complacency about the immigration crisis by giving viewers a face to
the human cost of the unrelenting migrant crisis and to illuminate the moral and social divisiveness occurring at
this time in history.
If people don't care, what hope does the world have?
