I was really drawn to the romantic and classical nature of Vasantha’s submission, and so were many of my fellow judges. While the practice of hand-tinting is not often associated with contemporary photography, it is wonderful to see a resurgence of such craft methods in Vasantha’s project. The result is a skillful blurring of fact and fiction, which heightens the mythical element of his chosen subject matter, both complementing and subverting a cultural artform so closely associated with wealthy India.

I was struck by this work immediately, and even more so when I realized the reference to the late Nigerian photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, who photographed over a thousand different African women’s hair styles.

These environmental portraits, made in and around the violent favelas of Brazil, are direct and raw. They help to bring numbing statistics into focus as personal realities. The young men are of African descent, which means that they live in particular danger because 59 Afro-Descendents are murdered every day, for little or no reason, in Brazil. The settings of the portraits — cramped, spare, impoverished — convey a lot about their complex, tenuous situations. And the direct gaze of each person seems to demand that we look and see them and their worlds with the same intensity.

Combining appropriated imagery with pictures of their own making, Albarrán and Cabrera create a fictitious universe of people, places, and events seemingly drawn from memory, but which actually never happened, at least not the way they are shown. In a way, their pictures are non-portraits, with facial features obscured by shadow, and most recognizable elements suppressed. Superficially, they look like family snapshots, but the vivid palette and clever compositions draw us in, inviting us to search for detail that is always just a little beyond sight, the significance of which is uncertain. It’s a wonderful project that raises questions of identity and memory, vision and perception, and the passage of time.

I was attracted to David Wagnières’ series for several reasons: the palpable sense of waiting for something, the rich, saturated color palette and the elegance of composition. Each photograph drew me in and made me want to find out more about what was happening and what was hanging in the air.

I was immediately struck by Robin’s portrait series and found myself returning to it again and again throughout the jury process. At once timeless and classic yet also modern, her photographs possess a strong, clear and unique vision and hold together beautifully as a body of work. I was pleased to discover her during the judging and will look forward to following her work.

Whenever I serve on juries, I never look at the name of the artist, and often can’t even tell whether they are a male or female photographer. And I much prefer it that way. Truth be told, I’m not one for reading statements or captions unless I’m searching for information; I truly base my decisions on whether or not I like the pictures instinctually, and most often immediately.

It’s continually surprising to me how accurate my method turns out to be. I saw this image by Nelli Palomäki (not knowing it was hers) and immediately, viscerally, knew it was an incredible photograph. The pair of siblings, bathed in the soft shadows of a diffused northern light, create an image that is rich both formally and psychologically. When I found out later it was by Palomaki, it made perfect sense—I had first learned of her work several years before and had become instantly enamored of her masterful use of a certain type of minimalism in portraiture that is usually reserved for daguerreotypes and other 19th-century likenesses. The minimalism and utter simplicity that it takes to isolate an image down to its most basic components—clothing and background—captures something that is curious, surreal, and affectionate.

Ultimately, (and perhaps conversely), this picture has a complexity that one rarely sees in photography today. It reminds me of one of my favorite photographers, Emmett Gowin, and the emotionally charged images he took of his wife Edith and her sisters in Danville, Virginia in 1968. Palomaki’s work reflects a similar feel for her subjects, clear-eyed, but also empathetic and poignant.

By combining social and political commentary with aesthetics in her series, “My Stealthy Freedom II,” Marinka Masséus makes a statement about women’s rights, specifically in relation to the forced wearing of hijabs, chadors and burkas. With her images, Masséus addresses a woman’s right to choose whether to be “seen” or not. Wearing colorful, airy fabrics that seem to resist gravity, the sitters might belie the actual burden of wearing such garb. Instead, what is revealed is a bit of the wearer’s personality. We may not be able to see their faces but we can feel the force of their spirits. The hijab can be a state of mind as well as a state of dress and, for me, these portraits speak to a growing resistance toward repressive control, sartorial or otherwise.