We are proud to announce the Rfotofolio Selections for 2021.
This year we were honored to have Diana Bloomfield and Ann Jastrab as our guest jurors. We appreciate their time and thoughtful choices.
We asked each juror to select their top portfolio, and three works of merit in
two-dimensional work and for three-dimensional work. This was no easy task.
Be it color or black and white, street photography or abstract, you inspired us with the amazing work that you created. If your work does not appear here do not be discouraged. There was so much wonderful work that we could not select simply because we are limited to a certain number.
As is our tradition we include our choices for the Rfotofolio Selections.
Thank you for entering this years call. By doing so, we are able to see work that we might have missed. Your donations help support Rfotofolio and the grants we give each year.
Thank you to Carol Boss and Hahnemühle paper for your support of Rfotofolio and this years Hahnemühle Award.
Thank you to Lensbaby for sponsoring the Lensbaby Award.
This year Rfotfolio has selected Norm Snyder and Greg Brophy for the Hahnemühle Award, and Megan Bent for the Lensbaby Award.
The jurors made their choices based on the portfolio of work not just the image featured in todays announcement.
Please click on images below to see a different view.
Selections from Diana Bloomfield
I was honored to be asked to jury, along with Ann Jastrab, the 2021 Rfotofolio Award. Enormous appreciation goes to Connie Rosenthal and Jerry Rosenthal for the opportunity and for sponsoring this Award. To be able to review so much meaningful and beautifully executed work was a privilege. I also thank everyone who made a portfolio submission. I looked through all these outstanding submissions many times. In the end, I chose work that resonated and stayed with me. I appreciated those artists who had a concept that they were able to fully realize, whether in a 2-D or 3-D art form, and who also took the time to write an artist statement that was both articulate and supported the artwork.
Diana H. Bloomfield November 26, 2021
Three Dimensional Work
Karen Olson
I was drawn to these sculptural pieces from the first moment I saw them. They work on so many levels, and I appreciate how the artist so expertly managed to convey both vulnerability and strength in each unique piece. I love their fluidity and translucent quality. Each choice made— from the images themselves to the paper and their scorched edges, and the way they’re so artfully and beautifully shaped— all have meaning and work so well together. Conceptually inventive, imaginative, and fully realized, this is a perfect example of how all the thoughtfully chosen details perfectly create the whole. Diana Bloomfield
Works of Merit
Laurie Beck Peterson
I appreciate the concept of documenting what remains— the spaces we leave behind. This compelling series looks to the landscape, documenting the literal spaces left behind from felled ash trees, destroyed by the emerald ash borer infestation. The images themselves point to the devastation of a forest, but they also serve to reveal the dynamic nature and impermanence of the landscape. Printing in the 19th century process of cyanotype, the artist elevates these forgotten tree stumps to both canvas and sacred object- a kind of “totem” that serves as a historical document, and as an omen. I very much appreciate this unique work, especially how the ravaged tree stumps become an integral part of the landscape images printed on them. Diana Bloomfield
Debra Achen
Each of these beautiful landscape images takes on a whole new meaning and rich dimensionality when folded and stitched. A comment on our “world folding in on itself,” these strategically placed folds, pleats, and stitches not only add a striking 3-D effect, but they also suggest irreparable damage. I am drawn to the tension between the sheer beauty of these manipulated images and the message they carry. I also appreciated the cogent artist statement that supported this impressive body of work. Diana Bloomfield
Amy Rockett Todd
I was immediately drawn to the abstract graphic details and the geometry of these 3-D constructions. I find them visually fascinating. Reading the artist statement, I appreciate the connection between past and present- from using architecture’s history to the blending of 21st century technology with the 19th century process of wet-plate collodion. I am especially intrigued by the glass piece, where strategic lighting allows for multiple images and perspectives. I love that the one shadow literally looms over and elevates the original piece. I find this structure particularly powerful.Diana Bloomfield
Two Dimensional Work
Vaune Trachtman
I was immediately drawn to this work as I think it’s such a spectacular way of using old family photographs to make a shared connection. The artist blends past and present, collapsing time through photographs that are separated by nearly a century, and expertly creates imagined shared experiences and landscapes. Although this work is very personal to the artist, this “collaboration across time” seems universal to me and would, I believe, communicate with any viewer. I appreciated the thoughtful artist statement, too, which really supports the imagery. This is such a strong body of work, reaching across time and creating a wholly imagined world between past and present. This is a real testament, too, to the power of photographs. I am also impressed that these are photopolymer gravures, with the triptych being my very favorite. A beautifully conceived and fully realized project. Diana Bloomfield
Works of Merit
Maria Vinogradova
Created by using medium-format film, slow exposures, and the 19th century photographic printing process of gum bichromate, these images offer a beautiful and timeless view of Moscow cityscapes. The artist has removed any signs of present-day, and in so doing has offered viewers an intriguing world that seems both real and imagined. The slow exposures work to create these dreamlike scenes, further enhanced by the painterly quality of the gum bichromate process. A spectacularly beautiful body of work, the stellar hand-applied printing is even more impressive in that each image was printed with a single b&w negative. Each perfectly composed image stands easily on its own, and- as a whole- creates a powerful visual story. I also appreciated the artist’s words about this work— lovely and poetic writing. Diana Bloomfield
Michael Teresko
I am always drawn to impressive photographic compositions. These images, all about the man-altered landscape, harken back to the style of the New Topographics photographers of the 1970’s. These clean, graphic, and well-composed images I find very appealing. I also appreciate the restrained color palette. These images make an impressive visual statement about the footprint we choose to leave on our immediate surroundings. Once again, I’m drawn to the tension of what appears oddly beautiful in its soft colors and clean compositions and the underlying message. Diana Bloomfield
Matt Roberts
I find these images original and unique. I looked at them many times and always found something new. I love the very idea of returning to older photographs and reimagining them in distinctly new ways. Undertaken during the onset and subsequent limitations of the pandemic, this artist has chosen to degrade and literally peel back layers of earlier intact photographs to speak of isolation, loneliness, and disconnection. The beautiful and enigmatic nature of these images, especially where the painterly and muted colors seem to run off the page, works to foil the sense of dread and loss. I appreciate, too, that there are so many (literal) layers to these images, allowing for open-ended narratives and multiple interpretations. Diana Bloomfield
Thank you to Connie and Jerry Rosenthal for inviting me to co-jury the 2021 Rfotofolio Call. There were so many incredible entries that it took a long time to whittle it down to just a few. I would actually say, and I imagine my co-juror might agree, that it was agonizing. I went back and forth many times, but ultimately decided on this group of images and artists.
For the 3-dimensional work, there were innovative solutions to historical processes, like the cyanotype chemistry applied to cross sections of trees and cut paper like maps and veins and rivers collaged in layers. There was also the subtle folding of paper, something that echoed the folds in the geology of the earth, something that was reinforced, strengthened by the artist’s hand. But ultimately, it was the lighter than air white paper with images of ghost trees, carefully burned on the edges after being formed, curled, molded, that made me hold my breath which earned the first place prize.
For the 2-dimensional work, there were many more entries and the challenges were greater. It became a matter of separating the good, the great, the exceptional. I was impressed by many of the projects submitted, but in the throes of the waning days of fall, I went with the projects that would move me through the longest pandemic. The merit awards included chlorophyll processed leaves revealing the artist taking back the word “crip” for her people and showing me that silver linings are complicated. There was another project that merged two disparate landscapes into a dream of possibilities and impossibilities. And another project with the deepest blue cast that revealed shooting stars in our hands, birds not quite frozen in flight, and something fleeting and intangible, which might just be life. But the first place honor went to eviscerated memories hanging on strings in front of scribbled backgrounds that could be the frustration that came with the twenty months slipping out of our hands.
Congratulations to all the artists and thank you for taking me on this journey, beautiful, moving, tempestuous, and gratifying.
Ann Jastrab, November 2021
Selections from Ann Jastrab
Three Dimensional Work
Karen Olson
Works of Merit
Laurie Beck Peterson
Charlotta María Hauksdóttir
Debra Achen
Two Dimensional Work
Suzanne Theodora White
Works of Merit
Rhonda Lashley Lopez
Lisa Cassell Arms
Megan Bent
Selections from Rfotofolio
Thank you to all of the artists that particpated in this years call. Your work spoke of isolation, beauty close to home, and dealing with change and how to create in a different world.
Our selections came very hard but in the end we went with the work that spoke to us both. Artist statements were both articulate and supported the portfolios, and we appreciate the effort. Photography is the perfect media to give us a new experience, to see something that only exist in the artist mind, and to appreciate the space around us. You inspire us.
Three Dimensional Work
Debra Achen
The works of Debra Achen and Charlotta María Hauksdóttir show us the landscape in a orginal way. Well crafted images expressing a new way to view the world around us.
Works of Merit
Amy Rockett Todd
Robin Dintiman
Vicki Hunt
Two Dimensional Work
Greg Brophy
Norm Snyder
These portfolios both show a love and mastery of the craft of image making producing beautiful storytelling.
Greg Brophy
Norm Snyder
Merit Awards
Maureen Bond
Robynne Limoges
Ursula Sokolowska
Stuart Zalka
Sara Harley
Leslie Gleim
Jeff Schewe
Liz Mamorsky
To learn more about these artists please click on their names.
Stuart Zalka
To learn more about our 2021 jurors please click on their name.
Thank you to Carol Boss at Hahnemühle Paper
Thank you to Lensbaby for being our sponsor.
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