DURHAM, NC (March 20, 2008) - The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and The Honickman Foundation have announced that photographer Mary Ellen Mark will judge the 2008 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography.
"Mary Ellen Mark's diverse and active career as one of our leading documentary photographers makes her a perfect choice to serve as judge for the First Book Prize," said Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies. "As a brilliant photographer, a sharp and experienced editor of her work, and the author of countless books of photography, she brings a rich perspective to this very important process."
Lynne Honickman, president of The Honickman Foundation, said, "Mary Ellen Mark's work is at once strong, compassionate, and empowering. She's a faithful reporter of reality who's totally comfortable with disturbing issues. She sees beyond surfaces into both the harsh and wondrous intricacies of the human condition-and gives us a new awareness. There are many books to argue the case, American Odyssey, Twins, Exposure, Extraordinary Child, and on . . . where her instinct is clear, focused, and right on the mark-because best of all, she a portrayer of Truth."
The biennial CDS/Honickman First Book Prize competition is open to American photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work and who use their cameras for creative exploration, whether it be of places, people, or communities; of the natural or social world; of beauty at large or the lack of it; of objective or subjective realities. The prize honors work that is visually compelling, that bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.
American photographers who are pursuing work of creative or social importance have too few opportunities for support and recognition. This is especially true when photographers are engaged in personal or in-depth projects that do not have direct commercial appeal. While there are other sources for grants and fellowships in photography, the chance to see a body of work in print, as a coherent book-length work, is rare. Concerned about this problem and recognizing their shared interests, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and The Honickman Foundation, based in Philadelphia, came together to create this new and important book-publication prize.
Robert Frank, one of America's most important and influential photographers, was the judge of the third competition in 2006. He chose Danny Wilcox Frazier, a freelance photographer, for the prize because of his "passionate photographs without sentimentality. . . . His work reaches out: let me tell your story, it is important." Frazier's dramatic black-and-white photographs of Iowa portray a changing Midwest of vanishing towns and transformed landscapes.
Frazier received a grant of $3,000, publication of a book of photography, and inclusion in an exhibition of prizewinners, set to open in 2011. Frank wrote the introduction for Frazier's book, Driftless: Photographs from Iowa, which was published in fall 2007 by Duke University Press in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies.
Maria Morris Hambourg, founding curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Photographs, chose Steven B. Smith, a photography professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, to win the second biennial competition for his stunning black-and-white photographs of the surreal intersection of suburbia and desert in California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Smith's The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West (Duke University Press/CDS Books) was chosen by Robert Pinsky as one of 2005's highlights in Slate magazine's The Year in Culture.
Renowned photographer Robert Adams, the prize's inaugural judge, selected Kansas-based photographer Larry Schwarm to win the first prize competition for his series of color images capturing dramatic prairie fires that take place in his native state each spring. Schwarm's book, On Fire, is in its second printing (Duke University Press/CDS Books).
Recently chosen by the readers of American Photo magazine as the most influential woman photographer of all time, Mary Ellen Mark has received international acclaim for her many books and exhibitions as well as her editorial magazine work. Mark's portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, brothels in Bombay, and her award-winning essay on runaway children in Seattle have confirmed her place as one of America's most significant and expressive documentary photographers. Among her most recent books are Twins (Aperture, 2003); a forty-year retrospective, Exposure (Phaidon, 2005); and Extraordinary Child (National Museum of Iceland, 2007). Mark is a contributing photographer to The New Yorker and has published photo-essays and portraits in such publications as Life, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair.
Submissions for the 2008 competition will be accepted from June 9 to September 5, 2008.
For more details about the prize, see the CDS Web site here.
