Photo © Steve Marshall
The BACKYARD Exhibition and Head On Photography Festival came to an end last Sunday. Incredibly, more than 1,600 visitors passed through the show over the six weekends it was open!
MPN was blown away with the quality of the 600 mobile images submitted from all around the world. The final 34 prints selected for the show were excellent quality thanks to the team from ARTHEAD. In fact, the prints, and photographs, were so good that most visitors were unaware that they were taken on a mobile phone.
You can see a gallery of all the finalists photos here and a walk through video of the space here.
The official opening was attended by over 150 people including, the Head On Photo Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig, Award-winning photo journalist Ben Lowy, Magnum photographers Ian Berry, Eli Reed and Chris Steele-Perkins, Shahidul Alam the director of Chombimela International Festival of Photography and Jeff Moorfoot the director of Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
Ben Lowy and Shahidul Alam at the BACKYARD opening – Photo © Norman Mah
Thanks to G-Technology, we were able to provide prizes to the top three photographs. The winning image was taken by Prassprasetio, from Indonesia, with his incredible interpretation of the backyard theme. The two runner up prizes went to Andrea O’Reilly and Sarah Moore.
The overall winner “Little girl taking a nap among the graves” by Prassprasetio.
Special thanks goes to the incredible volunteers (Norman Ma, Myles Kalus, Prugya Maini, Chantel Perlado, Chere De Koh, Lawrence Humblet, Jean-Jacques Halans and Justin Hevey) for giving up their weekends to look after the show. We really couldn’t have done the show without all your help.
Photo © Norman Mah
As the quality of mobile photographs improves, so must the curation. We selected the backyard theme because we were searching for photographs facilitated by mobile technology – small private moments that may have otherwise been lost. It is this process of thematic identification and selective curation that will help not only uncover great mobile photographs but help place them within a broader photographic discourse. This way, we can start talking about why a mobile photograph matters rather than what apps were used. The BACKYARD Exhibition is just the start. We want to continue to foster opportunities for dialogue, criticism and learning through mobile photography.
BACKYARD exhibition was an incredible experience, both challenging and exciting. It proved that mobile photo prints can maintain the aesthetics and integrity of the image. It also proved that there is a huge future for exploring photography through mobile devices, and that the support of sponsors, festivals and volunteers is essential in the early phase. We look forward to future opportunities in curating world-class mobile photo exhibitions.
Cheers,
Olly and Misho
MPN Co-founders
mobilephotonetwork.com