ST. PETERSBURG, FL (March 28, 2008) - Today judges at NPPA's 2008 Best Of Photojournalism competition named two of the top three award winners, the Photojournalist of the Year (Smaller Markets) and the recipient of Cliff Edom's "New America Award."
Denny Simmons of the Evansville Courier & Press is the 2008 Photojournalist of the Year (Smaller Markets), and Mario Tama of Getty Images has won Cliff Edom's "New America Award" for his coverage of the poor African-American community's struggle in New Orleans to recapture and rebuild the spirit of their city and homes after it was all but washed away by Hurricane Katrina.
The runner-up Photojournalist of the Year (Smaller Markets) was James Gregg of the Arizona Daily Star.
"What the judges were looking for in these Photojournalist of the Year portfolios were well edited, well rounded pictures with consistently strong images," judge Deanne Fitzmaurice said. "Often times we see entries that contained strong stories with weak singles, or visa versa. What we found was the work that rose to the top was tightly edited. The first place-winning portfolio was well balanced, consistent throughout, the singles were good, and both of the stories were strong."
"The second place [POY] portfolio has very strong single photographs but weak picture stories," judge Mary F. Calvert said. "The overall consistency of the portfolio made it the second placer winner. The third place portfolio [by Emily Rasinski of The Evening Sun] had strong picture stories but weak singles. There were too many singles, and we did not see the same skill in those single images as we did in the two stories. If this portfolio would have had six or seven strong singles it could have won."
Judges are spending Friday night and Saturday morning going through 20 portfolios they have pulled aside to consider for Photojournalist of the Year (Larger Markets). The winner of that honor will be announced when they finish the judging on Saturday.
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"Denny Simmons is one of those true photojournalists who is always willing to put in the long hours needed to make the pictures that tell the story," Kevin Swank, the Evansville Courier & Press's assistant managing editor of visuals said today. "He pushes for what he believes in and often will push the envelope on deadlines in his quest for a better picture – which he often gets."
"I am often amazed at the images he comes back with. Denny is very passionate about photojournalism and he approaches every assignment with the attitude that it will produce an amazing photograph. It does not matter what the subject matter is, he goes after it and tries to turn it into an page one centerpiece. He is just a great guy and a joy to work with. This award is an honor well deserved."
A staff photographer at the Evansville Courier & Press, Simmons is also NPPA's Region 4 Director and serves on the organization's board of directors. He's also NPPA's National Nominations Committee chair. When he graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism winning the College Photographer of the Year award in 1993 he went on to an internship at National Geographic magazine. After that he shot for the Jacksonville Journal Courier and then worked at the St. Joseph (Missouri) News Press. Simmons worked as a picture editor at the News-Sun in Waukegan, IL, before joining the Evansville staff as a photographer.
Simmons was sick in bed today, home from work, when he was reached the news of his 2008 Best Of Photojournalism portfolio victory. "I'm blown away," Simmons said, before he paused to tell his wife about news. "I'm in a feverous condition right now, but that's kind of normal for me," he laughed.
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Mario Tama was in New York City when he got word that he'd won Cliff Edom's "New America Award."
"I'm really humbled to hear this, and I'm also very honored," Tama said today. "I was in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina and for about two weeks afterwards, and witnessed what the people of that beautiful city went through, it was so intense and shocking. I was never really able to forget about what I'd seen. Since then I've fallen in love with the city and its people and it's a beautifully tragic place in America right now."
The Edom Award recognizes excellence in photographic storytelling about rural or ethnically diverse people. It honors the contributions made to photojournalism by Clifton C. Edom (1907-1991), a University of Missouri School of Journalism professor who co-founded the Missouri Photographic Workshop with his wife, Vilia, in 1949. “In urban communities and rural towns, the spirit of diversity is celebrated and witnessed in everyday life,” the criteria for the Edom Award says. “Our goal is to recognize award winning photographic storytelling about communities, groups, and issues in America that are often under-covered in the press.”
With his Best Of Photojournalism entry Tama wrote, "The poor African-American's of New Orleans never had it easy, yet today they are in a headlong struggle to recapture the identity and spirit of their community ... Many can't afford to return to the city, while those who can face a dearth of jobs, an affordable housing crisis, schools in shambles, and a homeless population that has doubled. The sense of isolation is unmistakable in their disrupted neighborhoods which often remain largely empty."
"Pancho Bernasconi [Getty's director of photography and news] has been so incredibly supportive of sending me down there 10 or 15 times since the hurricane," Tama told News Photographer magazine today. "It's been a story that was covered so intensely when it happened but not that much afterwards. Pretty much 40 percent of the city is still unoccupied. We felt we wanted to do our part to document and preserve and excavate what's going on there. It's become my second home. The people have welcomed me. The photos are not about my work as a photographer, it's about the people of New Orleans and their resilience, picking themselves back up and getting on their feet again when the government's not helping very much."
"We loved this set of pictures from New Orleans, The photographer really made a commitment to these people," Calvert said. "The photographer produced a set of soulful, gorgeous and cohesive images. These photographs are timeless. Each time you look one of these pictures again and again you find a new nugget of information."
The photographer documented many neighborhood traditions and historic events which are at risk of disappearing if the city doesn't rebuild and if the community doesn't preserve some of its past. "The history of the neighborhoods is so threatened," Tama said, "which is why I thought it was important to document some of the smaller things like the annual neighborhood parades, it's a pleasure for me to follow along on these things and tragic to think that it could all just disappear."
"The photographer understood the importance of this community before Hurricane Katrina. And he understood the dignity of this community after Katrina," judge Dudley Brooks said. "The photographer applied the same approach to post Hurricane Katrina, and at the same time still documenting what is no longer there but still treating the people with the same amount of importance as he realized they had before any of this happened. Its hard to keep a positive spin on a story like this when you have covered it as long as this photographer has, in addition to what really happened to the people in this community. For this story the photographer did a really good job of pulling this off and focused on the positive and showed that life goes on."
Tama was insipred by many types of photographers and photography while studying at Rochester Institute of Technology, and says he was influenced by Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, and the classic simplicity of that kind of a complex Frank or Arbus photograph is evident in his portfolio. "I avoid the photographic gimmicks when I can, and just try to take a point of view that's as simple as possible and immerse myself in the people, New Orleans is such a welcoming, free-spiritited place. These are the types of pictures that I could never have taken in somewhere like New York City, where the camera is seen as more of a weapon. In New Orleans, I can navigate into these spots and capture these situations."
Bernasconi said Tama is typical of many of the Getty photographers who "produce great work and take a while to realize how great their work really is. Their egos are about making better pictures, not about themselves. I'm so proud of Mario, the way he sees things is so clear and simple yet has so much depth. And I'm proud of a Getty photographer winning the Edom Award, because we're a 'wire' and usually it's newspaper photographers who win this award."
Tama joined Getty Images in 2001 and covers global news, including the events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He graduated in 1993 with a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied photojournalism, and worked for the Journal Newspapers in suburban Washington, DC. As a freelancer he covered the impeachment hearings of President Clinton and the 2000 elections for The Washington Post an for Agence France-Presse. His work on Baghdad's orphans was exhibited at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France, in 2004.
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Each day at 1 p.m. EST during the judging The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in partnership with NewsU, will host a live series of Webcasts from the Best Of Photojournalism judging. By watching, you'll get an inside look at the Still Photography and Web categories as they're judged, and Poynter's host Kenneth F. Irby will conduct a 15-minute live interview and conversation with a different BOP judge each day. In case you miss the daily Web cast they will be archived on the Poynter Web site. They're free, and you can enroll in the NewsU "course" online here.
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Photographers from more than 140 countries entered this year's Best Of Photojournalism competition, which has remained a free contest with no entry fees since its beginning. More than 4,000 people entered the contest, up more than 25 percent over last year, and there are more than 21,000 entries totally over 58.000 individual items (photogrpahs, clips, and Web sites).
Winners of each day's categories will be announced daily on the NPPA Web site, and the BOP's Photojournalists of the Year and the winner of Cliff Edom's "New America Award" will be announced at the end of the week.
Judges for this year's Best Of Photojournalism still photography categories are Dudley Brooks, formerly of The Washington Post and who is now with Ebony/Jet Magazines; Suzette Moyer of the St. Petersburg Times; Jens-Kristian Soegaard, the director of photography for Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten (the main daily newspaper in Denmark); Mary F. Calvert of The Washington Times; and Deanne Fitzmaurice of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Judges of BOP's Web categories are Ellyn Angelotti, an adjunct faculty member and editor for The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL; Michelle Maltais, a deputy editor of business and technology for the Los Angeles Times' Web site; Irwin Thompson, the deputy director of photography for The Dallas Morning News; Seth M. Gitner, a multimedia journalist for Roanoke.com and The Roanoke Times; and Thea Breite, multimedia photography editor for The Boston Globe.
NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism judging is sponsored this year by Apple, Canon USA, NPPA, and The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. On-site Still Photography judging is powered by Aperture.
