SMITHSONIAN gallery review

Photographs line the gallery walls at the Smithsonian Castle; these are the finalists in the Smithsonian Magazine’s Sixth Annual Photo Contest.  Of the 17,000 photos entered, there are seven winning photographs on display, as well as about 50 other finalists.  Each photograph was entered in one of five categories:  Natural World, Travel, People, Americana, and Altered Images.

The photographs are very diverse in geographical location and moderately diverse in content, but remarkably similar in emotion.  Most have a natural tranquility, established through a single subject at ease with the surrounding environment.  I had expected to find exceptional examples of photojournalism, photographs displaying emotion, convey conflict, tell a story.  While some of the photographs do tell a story, it is generally one of comfort rather than unrest.  I found the photographers placing a much higher emphasis on composition, using techniques and rules we’d learned in class, than on the message being portrayed.

My favorite photograph on display is one entitled “A Man Washing in Malowi,” a finalist in the People category (above).  Jayson Carpenter seems to have established a true rapport with his subject, even though in his description the photographer admits to have only taken several frames of the stranger.  The photograph defies the rule of thirds, the subject instead centered within the frame.  This is a powerful method a photographer uses to grab the viewers’ attention.  The the man’s dark eyes seemed to stare straight into mine, again pulling me in away from the dozens of other photographs.  While the composition of this piece is relatively simple, the power of the shot and the relationship with the subject made this one stand out above even the winning photographs.