Ochi Reyes

University of Westminster - MA Photographic Studies

Selector's Comment: The marriage of art and science is as old as photography itself, and in Ochi Reyes's 'Mother', the photographer employs scientific techniques to record the personal possessions of her mother which remain after her death. I found Reyes's images deeply moving, a photographic study trying to find meaning and acceptance in grief. Reyes's resulting images resist being constrained into traditional definitions of genres of photography; both abstract and landscape, and a form of lasting portrait. Under the exact, objective and unforgiving gaze of the microscope, Reyes movingly searches for the remaining traces of a loved individual, yet her images also remind the viewer of the unifying and universal nature of texture, fabric, touch, and memory.

Lewis Bush

London College of Communication - MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography

Selector's Comment: Lewis Bush's bold project 'War Primer 3' is a reworking of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's 'War Primer 2' (2011), in which Bush aims to both debate Broomberg and Chanarin's artistic practice, and make his own social political statement. Bush's updated photo-collages which combine Broomberg and Chanarin's original images with images of economic inequality and lines from Brecht's poem 'A Worker Reads History', reveal a photographer with a deep understanding of the history and potency of photographic traditions such as photo-collage. Bush's eloquently written contextualization of this project, considered alongside his images; combine to reveal a clear and confident artistic and intellectual voice, one which successfully examines the uncomfortable and complex subject of appropriation, a topic which has dominated contemporary photography in recent years.

Adriana Monsalve

University of Westminster - MA Photojournalism

Selector's Comment: Adriana Monslave's 'Clear as black' is a highly accomplished photographic series exploring the fluidity of racial and personal identity. Her sensitively observed photographs employ a distinctive cropping and compositional style which blends both documentary and portraiture genres, to capture specific moments which successfully examine the questions posed by her project. Her resulting immediate and intimate portraits of the peoples of Puerto Rico endure long after their first viewing.

Nathalie Joffre

London College of Communication - MA Photography

Selector's Comment: It is perhaps my own personal background as a photography curator based in a museum, which first attracted me to Nathalie Joffre's video piece 'He told me that his garden...', a response to an exploration of a photographic archive at Bethlem Royal Hospital. In the nineteenth century the fashion for collecting and classifying photographs of the face, in accordance with the 'science' of physiognomy, was a significant trend in photography. I therefore enjoyed Joffre's contemporary approach to exploring this tradition's history and legacy. Her piece effectively evokes the haunting presence of a physical place forever tarnished by the collective experience of individuals; while showing the limitless potential a historic photographic archive possesses for renewal, amid personal reinterpretation.

Sharon O'Neill

University of Brighton - MA Photography

Selector's Comment: Both a portrait of spaces and the individuals who inhabit them - despite their absence from the frame. Sharon O'Neill's 'Flats' explores the hidden everyday of anonymous communal housing, focusing specifically on a council block designed by Sir Leslie Martin, constructed in 1956. Through the combination of O'Neill's keen photographic eye for individual detail and the careful juxtaposition of archival material, this refined study is an elegant exploration of the tensions found between the idealism of post-war domestic building programmes, and the reality of contemporary urban life.