There are a lot of awards for photography out there, but you don’t get many more prestigious than those given out by the Royal Photographic Society.
It’s the oldest such photography society in the world, set up in Queen Victoria’s time, and the patron is now Catherine, Princess of Wales.
This year’s awards have just been announced, and some interesting photographers have been honoured. First up is Susan Derges, who received the RPS Centenary Medal in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the art of photography.
That’s not particularly noteworthy, you might think, but what makes Susan interesting is that often, she doesn’t even use a camera. Here is how she captured some germinating seeds during lockdown, for instance.
‘I had no camera but had brought a scanner and computer with me, so began a daily process of checking and scanning the emerging new sprouts, which over three months of lockdown have increased to a collection of images in the hundreds.’
For Shoreline, below, Susan submerged a large sheet of colour photographic paper in a fast-flowing river near a waterfall at night. As the water flowed over it she fired a flash from above and the paper was returned to the lab to be processed. See more images and insights on Susan’s website.
A well-deserved Victor
Other RPS award winners include Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, who’s the recipient of this year’s RPS Award for Achievement in the Art of Photography.
Working initially on landscapes, Diop then moved into fashion photography, while also focusing on fine-art and self-portraiture as part of his personal work.
Indeed, ‘Being There,’ his collaboration with Lee Shulman, was named Book of the Year in this year’s AP awards.
Diop memorably inserted himself into old photographs of white, segregated America – the work manages to be thought-provoking and ‘disruptive’ to stereotypes, but also touching and sometimes amusing.
See the full list of RPS award winners here.
