Monochrome Photography Awards Judges

Your photographs will be reviewed by a panel of renowned Black and White Photographers.

Meet Monochrome Photography Awards Judges:

ALESSIO COGHE Photographer alexcoghe.com Alex Coghe is a photojournalist, editor, writer and street photographer, now lives in Mexico. Since 2010 he moved to Mexico where he began photographing a new and surreal world in Mexico City, but always through a documentary eye.

NICOLA DAVISON REED Photographer nicoladavisonreed.com Taking photographs is my drug of choice. I get high capturing time for you and for myself. It is a privilege to improve upon a passion but it is a necessity for me and I am well and truly hooked ~ I never take it for granted. If someone gets a hit from my images then that's all I can ask.

DREW DOGGETT Photographer drewdoggett.com From 2006-2012 he worked under world-renowned fashion photographers like Mark Seliger (his former mentor), Steven Klein, Craig McDean and more. Drew then left NY to travel to the Himalayas, where he realized he could combine his love of photography with his passion for travel and exploring hard-to-reach locales and telling stories - all while utilizing the discipline and skills he learned working in NYC. Since then, Drew has embarked on journeys across the globe. His work can be found in public and private collections globally, notably the Smithsonian African Art Museum (DC). He is also the founder of a non-profit, Art Cares, which donates proceeds from publications and print sales to fund local charity efforts in indigenous areas.

JADY BATES Photographer jadybates.com Jady Bates is a burgeoning photographer. She enjoys life, animals, people and the world.

LUDOVICO POGGIOLI Photographer ludovicopoggioli.it Born in 1973 in Umbria, where he still live and work, always distracted and deeply in love. He often walk with a camera around hid neck and hid two dogs on leash and every now and then he take a photo that he still like the day after. He choose analogue photography because leaves him free to forget why he is shooting a shoot, because in every roll developed he find a shot that surprises him, because printing his own photos in the darkroom is exciting and every print is unique.

JEANNETTE PALSA Photographer jpalsaphotography.com Since 2004 she has worked in the historic photographic processes of gum dichromate, platinum palladium printing and wet-plate collodion. In 2005 she received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for her wet-plate collodion series The Illuminati. In 2011 she was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for her wet-plate collodion series The Bacon Chronicles. For the past three years she has been experimenting with the historical photographic process of daguerreotypy and most recently working with photo-encaustics. Her work is exhibited nationally and resides in private and public collections.

MICHAEL JOLLIFFE Photographer michaeljolliffe.com As photography is not my primary source of income it allows me the freedom to try whatever I want, having the pleasure of trying many different genres, subjects, cameras, film and digital, really exploring, finding out what it is that I like to shoot. Right now I'm about capturing life around me in black and white. Exploring a matter of fact, documentary style, candid moments at home or with friends, street photography, details and landscapes.

NOFAR HOROVITZ Photographer compositzia.com/art After completing my photography studies in "Camera Obscura" School of Art in Tel Aviv, I opened my own photography studio. Photography for me is a remarkable tool that allows me to sculpt my vision into an image, I appreciate the necessity of light in the picture, and also the lack thereof.

XAVIER GUARDANS Photographer xavierguardans.com Xavier Guardans' photographs explore nature and light. Through widespread travels for extended periods of time, Guardans demonstrates an extraordinary ability to be comfortable in many different worlds. His photography is characterized by impressive technical and aesthetic skill, a gifted sense of composition, and an underlying sensibility of distinctive and rare humanism. His reductive eye imparts his photographs with the power to concentrate things to their essential beauty and ultimate truths.

PIA ELIZONDO Photographer piaelizondo.com Pia Elizondo was born in Mexico city in 1963. As from 1985, she has made photography her profession. Her work has been exhibited in Latin America, the United States and Europe. In 1994, she is the recipient of the grant “Young creators” (Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes) to develop a project about Mexico City that will be largely exhibited. Since 2001, she is member of the National Creators System In Mexico. She resides in France since 2003, and since then her work has been distributed by Agence VU in Paris. Since her arrival in France, Pia Elizondo has exhibited her work individually in Mexico, France, England, Luxemburg, and Spain several times.

MICHEL RAJKOVIC Photographer michelrajkovic.fr After a few years of practice in color, Michel Rajkovic opted, in 2007, for black and white as mode of artistic expression. Through his photographs, Michel Rajkovic opens a door on another world. In this search of evasion, he utilizes photography as a support of the imaginary and light as revelator. His domains of predilection are marine landscapes that he treats in a purified manner, placing just a few elements here and there, leaving liberty for the spectator to imagine a universe.

BEN NIXON Photographer bennixonphotography.com Ben Nixon creates landscapes of extraordinary beauty through the unwieldy nineteenth-century wet-plate collodion process, a hands-on photographic technique that offers the artist tight control of materials and yet invites serendipitous visual irregularities influenced by conditions in the field. Nixon avoids photographing recognizable landscapes, transforming non-iconic terrain into mysterious, intriguing worlds. Nixon prefers older technologies so that he can slow down and respond to the subject in front of him. While shooting in the field, Nixon's car becomes the darkroom, because in the collodion process, glass-plate negatives have to be prepared, exposed, and developed on-site while the materials are moist. If the plates dry, they are no longer light sensitive. Although Nixon is a master technician, he sets aside academic ideas of what constitutes a perfect print, preferring to show his hand as an artist.

NORMA I. QUINTANA Photographer normaiquintana.com Norma I. Quintana (born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1954) is an American photographer and educator working in the tradition of social documentary. She photographs with film, primarily in black and white using available light. Quintana has studied under Mary Ellen Mark, Graciela Iturbide and Shelby Lee Adams. She has lectured nationally at major universities, including art residencies at Penn State and American University Washington D.C. She is a founding member of the Bay Area non-profit, PhotoAlliance.

MARTIN STAVARS Photographer martinstavars.com Martin Stavars was born in 1981 in Czestochowa, Poland. He studied economics, computer science, and photography, which he ultimately focused on. He specializes in black and white cityscapes, landscapes, and night photography. He and his camera have visited more than twenty countries, with Asia holding a key spot. In 2012, Charta Editions published his first photographic monograph entitled "Megalopolis".

ALLISON BARNES Photographer allisonbarnes.net Allison Barnes is large format photographer, writer and analog printer. Her photographs and essays often focus on the themes of Landscape and the ways in which one explores the value and phenomenology of Place. Open to many processes, she is known to use gelatin silver and platinum/palladium prints, prints at varying sizes from postcards to murals, and lately has utilized the book as a form to display her visual narratives. Her work has been displayed in galleries and museums abroad.

KATARINA BALGAVY Photographer katarinabalgavy.com Born in Vienna, Austria. Katarina Balgavy studied International Development, Multimedia and Fine Arts. She worked as a Creative Director in international media projects while she produced print and visual design, film and motion for several media and art culture. Her photography works include clients and magazines like Vogue, Elle, Diesel, Dossier, Vice and more. She has been included in art publications and exhibited in Paris, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Vienna. Katarina is the Founder of The Plastic Index, a platform for innovation and sustainability while she develops new media projects in the fields of design, architecture and contemporary art.

TED PREUSS Photographer preussphotography.com Ted Preuss is a self-taught photographer from Chicago. For as long as he can remember, he has been taking photographs. He picked up his first camera at the age of seven and instantly became obsessed with the nature of the medium. During the last decade Preuss has focused his work towards fine art. Preuss works solely in black and white using traditional techniques, including vintage view cameras with century old lenses. His work been featured in Zoom Magazine, Focus Magazine, Large Format Magazine and is widely collected around the world.

CLAIRE A. WARDEN Photographer claireawarden.com Claire A. Warden (b. Montreal, Quebec) is an artist working in Phoenix, Arizona. She received her BFA in Photography and BA in Art History from Arizona State University. Claire's work explores intersecting ideas of illusion, manipulation, identity and performance. The constructed photograph is integral to her arts practice. Claire’s work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad.

DAVID FOKOS Photographer davidfokos.net Using an 85-year old 8x10 view camera, world-renowned artist David Fokos has been photographing the landscape for over 30 years. Often working 100 hours or more to craft a single image, his elegant black and white images have been lauded as masterpieces of minimalism. Represented by 14 galleries on three continents, Fokos’ work can be found in many museum, corporate, and private collections. Of his work, Fokos says: “The images I make today are the result of decades of exploration and discovery in my quest to understand how we experience the world around us. My goal is to express the essence of my experience -- evoking within the viewer the same emotions I felt when making the images. With my work, I’m not trying to show the viewer what these places look like, but rather what they feel like.”

ANNA FILIPOVA Photographer anfilip.com Anna Filipova is a documentary photographer based between Paris and London. She has worked for the International New York Times and has been published in Dazed & Confused and The Guardian, amongst others. For the past few years, she has been focusing on the northern parts of the world, where she explores social and environmental topics based in remote and inaccessible areas.

REBECCA CAIRNS Photographer rebeccacairns.com Rebecca Cairns is a fine art analogue photographer who specializes in shooting black and white portraits and landscapes. She studied photography at Humber College. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been featured in publications such as SHOTS magazine, If You Leave and EnRoute Magazine. Rebecca is currently based out of Toronto.

ROMAN LORANC Photographer romanloranc.com Roman Loranc was born in Bielsko-Biala, Poland and emigrated to the United States in 1981. In 1984 he moved to California, and shortly thereafter fell in love with the Central Valley. Loranc shapes the photo from start to finish. He operates a 4x5 Linhof field camera, shoots the majority of his photographs with a 210mm Nikkor lens, using Kodak's classic Tri-X film, and hand prints his negatives on multigrade fiber paper. Mr. Loranc is a firm believer that images can best and most genuinely be captured only through the use of film. As such, all of his prints are from film, and the only film he uses is Kodak’s Tri-X, which he has found to be reliable, consistent and, of utmost importance, only of the highest quality. The innate drama of the landscapes is reproduced through a variable split-toning (sepia and selenium) technique. All the printing, spotting, and archival mounting are done by the photographer.

DAVID JOHNDROW Photographer davidjohndrow.com David Johndrow is a fine art photographer living in Austin, Texas. After studying photography the University of Texas, he began shooting commercial work as well as pursuing his more personal fine art photography. David’s continuing series, Terrestrials, combines his passion for gardening and photography and features macro nature photographs of animals and plants that inhabit his Hill Country, Texas garden. These photographs represent his attempt to give an iconic power and weight to beings that are small and seemingly insignificant. They are formal portraits in some ways, but because they are shot “in their element” they have an immediacy and wildness that can't be captured in a studio. To realize his vision, he prints with silver gelatin, platinum/palladium, and gumoil. His photographs are part of the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography, as well as in many private collections.

STEFANO BRUNESCI Photographer stefanobrunesci.com First inspired by the timeless portraits of Hollywood greats such as Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, Stefano first began photographing women at the age of 13. After a short diversion into travel and landscape photography in his late teens Stefano returned to his first passion, editorial fashion, in 2007. Although a convert to digital and a strong supporter of its benefits, Stefano prefers to keep his use of photoshop to a minimum and often publishes entirely un-retouched work in the belief that passion and connection with the subject is the most important aspect of any photograph. As he says, "When you photograph a woman you're capturing a moment in her life and you can't fake that with any software."

TOMASZ LAZAR Photographer tomaszlazar.pl Born 1985 in Szczecin, Poland. An independent photographer, a graduate of the West Pomeranian University of Technology, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology. Winner of photography contests in Poland and abroad (e.g. the Sony World Photography Award, the International Photography Award, BZWBK Press Photo, Grand Press Photo, Lumix Festival for Young Journalism, Grand Prix at Photo Festival in Łódź). He took the second place in the World Press Photo 2012 contest in the “People in the News” category and received Picture of the Year in BZBWK Press Photo 2012. Since 2011, he is a member of the Un-posed photography group, dealing with street photography. His work was published in "Mono" book made by Gomma Books about most talented contemporary black and white photographers. Coffee-lover and a good music enthusiast. He derives pleasure from spending time with other people and devotes most of his time to photography. Recently, he is constantly on the move.

DOMINIQUE BOLLINGER Photographer dominiquebollinger.com Dominique Bollinger was born in Lyons, France, in 1950. He lives near Rome since 1986 and has been making photographs for over 40 years. During the 1980s, Bollinger travelled in the U.S and Mexico, photographing the landscape in color. In 1982, he won the “Prix Kodak de la Critique Photographique” in Paris, for a landscape series in color from the region of “Cévennes” in France and in 1998 First Prize G.R.Namias, Milano, Italy. Since moving to Rome in 1986, the artist has worked almost exclusively in black and white, capturing the architecture and landscape of his adopted country. He opened his own gallery ( Orcia Fine Art Photography ) in Tuscany, near Siena, in 2010, and began a serie on Val d’Orcia landscapes with special 8x10” camera. Recent exhibitions include shows at Fotosphere Gallery, New York; Flo Peters Gallery, Hamburg, Germany; Gallery Benninger, Cologne, Germany; The International Photography Gathering, Aleppo, Syria. His work has been published in UK, USA, Australia, Italy, France. He has also published 2 books (The South and Fleurs). Among the permanent collections holding Bollinger’s work are Centre Georges Pompidou and Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Musée Nicephore Niepce, Chalon, France; Museo della fotografia, Caltagirone, Italy ; and he has numerous private collections in USA and Europe. He has done commercial works with Ikea, Patek Philippe, Pioneer.

ANDRE BRITO Photographer andrebrito.com Andre Brito was born in Porto in 1972. His first photos were nudes. He used this term deliberately, as he do not find his own photos really erotic. He think are more graphic, or sensual. Whenever he is working in the studio or out on location, He always try to put the focus on his model and present her as a strong human being in her natural enviroment. He want to communicate that women are not only sensual, but also in equal measure strong personalities - not the fragile creatures that are so often portrayed in nude photography.

GIACOMO BRUNELLI Photographer giacomobrunelli.com Giacomo Brunelli (b. Perugia, Italy, 1977) graduated with a degree in International Communications in 2002. His series have been exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (Uk), Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris (France), Delhi PhotoFestival (India), Format Festival, Derby (Uk), Robert Morat Galerie, Hamburg (Germany), Noorderlicht Photofestival (The Netherlands), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), Daegu PhotoBiennal (South Korea), Angkor PhotoFestival (Cambodia), BlueSky Gallery, Portland (Usa), The New Art Gallery Walsall (Uk), Griffin Museum ,Boston (Usa), StreetLevel Glasgow (Uk), Photofusion, London (Uk), Arden & Anstruther Petworth (Uk), Galleria Belvedere Milan (Italy), Fotofestiwal Lodz (Poland) and Boutographies, Montepellier (France). The work has won the Sony World Photography Award, the Gran Prix Lodz, Poland and the Magenta Foundation “Flash Forward 2009”. It has also been featured widely in the art and photography press. His work is in the collection of Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Uk Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and Portland Art Museum, Usa. “The Animals” (2008) and “Eternal London (2014) were published by Dewi Lewis Publishing. In 2012, he was commissioned by The Photographers’Gallery to do the “Eternal London” series.