Over at Jörg Colbergs Weblog he recently announced a portfolio competition – the winner will be featured on his blog (that I really like a lot!). I guess this is a great opportunity for young photographers – I’ll definitely participate.

More infos here.

BTW: Ryan Mc Ginely last year shot a campaign for Wrangler that won a prize in Cannes , now competitor Levis launched a campaign with exact the same photographer and a topic and style that is not so far away from what we saw with Wrangler… See an article at Creative Review here.

Last sunday I travelled to  the city of Darmstadt where the “Darmstadt days of photography” took place for the 5th time.
I had never been there before and I need to say that it’s really a great festival which combines interesting locations, sympathic organizers and international photography with lots of new stuff to discover (though I heard that not all lectures on saturday where that interesting.)

See some photos and installations shots here.

My friends Patrick Hamilton’s and Mark Ansorg’s photographs where selected for the exhibition, but didn’t win the “Merck Price” (5000 Euro). The winner was Nils Klinger with his series “Demarkation” that is about the former inner-german border and about people who tried to escape the socialistic East Germany. In his presenation, Nils Klinger connected photographs of places (e.g. a tunnel in Berlin that was used to reach West-Berlin through the undergroud) with text that gives some background information on the people who escaped then (not all had sucess – some where shot during the escape).This work totally deserved the price, it was among the best in the show.

I also liked the work of Michelle Sank very much. There’s a lot to discover on her website – big talent.

After 2005, in 2009 the Epson Art Photo Award again goes to my school, the FH Dortmund! The winner class consists of 7 of my friends & fellow students:

Stefan Becker
Kathi Ficek
Patrick Hamilton
Jonas Holthaus
Olga Kessler
Lennart Selle
Christine Steiner

So, allthough our school is officially not an “art academy” the FH Dortmund was again very succesfull with this Epson photo ART Award…15.000 Euro to the winner class- congratulations!

I also want to mention Albert Palowska and Vanessa Leissring who were among the selected works in the exhibiton that is on display at the Art Cologne right now.

My (and I’m not alone with this opinion!) favourite series was the one of Anja Engelke, art student from the university of Bremen. She was among the best selected works, too. In her work, she takes famous, iconic photographs, and bakes models of it that she then photographs. Unfortunately they are not online yet, and when you see the whole series it’s probably easier to understand…

This one was Gursky, but she also did a Ruff and a Sternfield and a Tillmanns. Sorry for the crappy image quality…

The american Society of publishing designers, SPD, chooses every year the best magazines – I love to check their galleries especially as most german ediorial design and photography isn’t that great…

http://www.spd.org/winners08

Esko Männikkö is a fininsh photographer who won the important Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008. The finalists of this prize were exhibited at the c/o galerie in Berlin this summer, and I liked the way Mr. Männikkö presented his work very much (see some snapshots of the exhibition below). He uses different kinds of wooden frames, different sizes, older ones and newer ones… It’s really inspiring to see photographs presented in such an unconventional way, not alu-dibond or diasec / plexi how you see it all the time these days (not that I don’t like these materials, but sometimes they just don’t fit!).

Esko Männikkö has also published some really beautiful books, available e.g. @ www.schaden.com

See more at his gallery’s website Nordenhake .

More examples of his framing here .

Although I saw a portrait of 2 circus artists at the National Portrait Gallery in London earlier this year, I didn’t know that this shoot was taken out of a series called “Circus” by Uk based photographers Anderson & Low. There are some more great circus portraits on their website, http://www.andersonandlow.com

By the way, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery in London accepts entries until the 25th of July. It’s a famous prize and comes along with a really good exhibition / tour and a nice catalogue, so if you have some good portraits – hand them in! If you don’t try, you don’t win!