Using a straight, mostly frontal approach, the images capture command centers, research facilities and former nuclear test sites across the United States. Void of people, the images convey a measured reflection on the Atomic Age, a period of time in the second half of the twentieth century characterised by the optimistic expectations for the use of Atomic energy, which was later marred by the complicated social, political and environmental ramifications. The images are reminiscent of the straight approach made popular by artists associated with the new topographics movement.

I think that nowadays it is important to underline the importance that an image can have, and how it can be transversal and an important message that speaks to more people. The composition and the subject of this image recall that of the classical works linked to the concept of piety, and put the suffering of the sick and of the women close to him at a religious and universal level. Every age has a disease that makes a human being an untouchable victim of prejudice and certainly - AIDS is that of the last thirty years. I chose this photo to combat this prejudice.

The series of photographs named “pole vault” by Klaus Lenzen captivated my imagination the first time I saw them, and every time I returned to look at them again they made me pause and appreciate the elegant simplicity captured so perfectly in each carefully framed photo.

These minimal compositions are hushed moments of movement and time, freed from the restraints of gravity, cropped out of context without becoming completely abstract, floating in a neutral space, suspended in dream-like grainy tones of middle gray. They make us aware of what is inside the frame and outside the frame, and celebrate small miracles — moments in an athletic ballet of precision, grace, balance and beauty.

I found this image to be at once arresting and poignant. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at and upon discovering the subject, I was impressed that this image could feel simultaneously familiar and foreign. Sariñana captures the abstract and concrete in one shot.

I was drawn by quiet and painterly work of Damion Berger during the process of judging. Shot by night-long exposure, using the motorboats as his brush, the artist visualized the invisible structures created by time and movement of the sea. These scenarios only exist while many are asleep. Contrasting with the primordial seascapes in the backgrounds, the dark thick path traced by moving points are transient sculptures. It reminded me of The Tale of the Heike - the impermanence of all things, like a dream on a night.

When framing this scene, the photographer chose to step back, allowing us to see all the details: the hospital bed, the cross on the wall, the medical equipment, and, most powerfully, the patient, who seemed to be experiencing a twinge of pain just as the shot was taken. A moment of great human vulnerability, caught in soft, natural light: that discord is what drew me to this image.

The series Under the Yuzu Tree by Chinese-born and UK-resident artist Feiyi Wen captured my attention immediately. Her work has a unique tactile physicality, mixing family album, ephemera and her own striking photographs. The series is a moving poem in images suspended in time and place, an example of how black and white photos, archival and new can fuse together into something so powerful and fresh.

The darkness of our memories spreads thin the amalgam of joy and sadness, soon more limber as it enters.
For a long time, photography has been known for producing images that suspend time, diving into our life experiences in order to illuminate objects, spaces and materials, and to trace over them the story of our human connection.
Marina Black’s strange images merge old photographs with traces of hand drawings, bringing to the surface accidents and lens aberrations in a unique encounter with the magic. What we see is not what we see, but who we are.