2. Lens culture Critics choice 2024: Global Call —Deadline: April 17, 2024

Before I entered this I emailed my OCA peers and asked:

Hi all

For those of you who know it, I’m trying to work out if it’s worth entering – of course no expectation of being picked, especially as the work picked previously looks of a type very different to my own.

But is it worth it for the exposure? or ticking a box – doesn’t cost a lot but they all add up! Any thoughts – I’m trying to be picky about paid comps, though they all seem to be that way.

Supplementary question, has anyone had one of their reviews? only an extra £20 but I had one recently after a photo comp that was pointless!

Any pointers gratefully received.

Thanks

Niki

So I decided to submit and request a review

Details: 1 single image free, or series of up to 10, judged as a series, which should work as a group, thematically or aesthetically. $45- 30% = $31.5- £25.30 $49 us total after discount. Optional, Receive a written review of your work for an additional $25. This is a unique opportunity to receive valuable and specific feedback on your work from one of our experienced industry professionals. Submission Reviews are done anonymously and will be completed by June, 2024 on a first-come, first-served basis.

It is a rare opportunity to have your work seen by 20 of the photography world’s leading experts. The work will be immediately reviewed by their editors. Selected submissions will be featured in their Competition Gallery and published across all their online channels, reaching an international audience of 3 million. (For example, more than 511 early entries were selected and featured during the 2023 Critics’ Choice Awards, and more than 200 of those were promoted via Lens Culture’s Instagram and Facebook platforms, garnering more than 400,000 likes and comments.) Enter your work early to take advantage of this incredible opportunity for global exposure!

Upload jpegs or pngs that are a minimum of 1200 pixels on the longest side (but up to 2000 pixels is fine) and no more than 10 MB.

This time I was working with a character limit of 2000 for my statement and bio, so adjusted to fit, but crucially I adjusted it to fit the criteria of the competition and that of the judge who was relevant to my category, ‘Places’. I also gave additional information to my reviewer, see below.

MY SUBMISSION:

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Statement Lens culture

What Lies Within, is a series of images taken in an ancient woodland. A conceptual project, it uses the landscape as a medium to express my thoughts on community. The photography transforms abstract ideas in my head, into something concrete, positioning the ancient woodland as a visual metaphor for community.

Though humans provoked the concept of the work, they are not evident in the images. The local community, often disharmonious and driven by difference, is in stark contrast with the harmonious characteristics of the woodland society. Footnote images signpost inherent qualities like cooperation, support, diversity, resilience, inclusion, networking, mutual exchange, and adaptation, which could be beneficially adopted in many human communities.

Known and accepted for some years, like other incomers in my neighbourhood, we are never adopted as local, no matter how long passes or the contribution to the community – a story common to settings across the globe.

Combining the world in my head with the one in front of me, through an internal and external passage through the landscape, has helped to heal some of the wounds that inspired the story’s beginning.

ARTIST BIO

Niki South was born and grew up in England. From 1995 she began holidaying in Wales; this culminated in buying a second home there in 2009 and transitioning to a ‘dual centre’ life between the two places. In 2019 she relocated to Wales permanently.

Currently completing her BA (Hons) Photography degree with the Open University, she has a particular interest in community. Her previous documentary work ‘Layers of Truth’ was informed by her ‘insider/outsider’ position where she highlighted issues arising during Covid 19 from ‘incomers’ trying to integrate into a small traditional community.

My submission: https://www.lensculture.com/submission-reviews/107428See the review below received 26.4.24: https://www.lensculture.com/submission-reviews/107428

Additional info I gave to the reviewer:

1. What is the single most important question/concern you have about your project that you wish to have answered here in this review?

Do the footnotes combined with the artist statement adequately signpost the story behind the series? Can a viewer understand the concept of the woods as a visual metaphor?

2. What do you hope to accomplish with your photography in the next few years?

To finish my degree, now 95% complete, to be able to move on and follow my inclination for combining narratives from my subconscious with images from the conscious world. I would like to publish other visual stories.

3. Is this an ongoing or completed project?

It will be completed soon when I publish a book with the images and accompanying poetry that I have written, that completes the signposting for the narrative.

4. Do you consider yourself a… photographer?

advanced

5. What genres of photography do you work in (mark all that apply)

fine art, documentary, imaginative storytelling

Hi Niki,

You can view your completed Submission Review here»

Thank you for trying out our Submission Review service. We hope it helps you refine your future competition entries! And we’d love to hear what you think. Please email us with any comments or suggestions. Thanks again!

Cheers-

The LensCulture Team

Reviewer Portfolio Feedback  26.4.24

Hi Niki-

It isn’t happenstance that you are using a forest as a metaphor for community. Fungi, aspen groves and many tree species are known to have elaborate networks of communication that bind them together. Not to mention all the other small organisms that make up the ecosystem that sustains the life of what we are seeing in your photographs. You pull any single member of the community out, and the whole forest suffers. Despite that the knowledge is out there for humans to make sense of it all, we continue to make the same, irreversible mistakes, over and over. And this project brings these questions, and more, to my mind. 

In response to your request for feedback, I am still a little confused by the overarching idea that you are going for. If what I have said above rings with you, I think it would be helpful to state it somewhat directly and concisely. For example, instead of saying “The photography transforms abstract ideas in my head, into something concrete,” and defining your work as a “conceptual project,” I would simply say “”What Lies Within” uses the forest landscape of [name the forest] as a metaphor for human communities and civilization.” Or something like that. 

That being said, I still want to understand how you see human communities as stark contrasts to this forest communities, but are using the forests as a metaphor for the human communities. Perhaps they are not a “metaphor” but a “model?” In other words, are you suggesting that these woodland spaces are a model for what it means to be a part of a community and to live in an ecosystem where all things must coexist and support each other’s life processes? Again, I am very interested in the ideas. I just think it’s a question of being clear and concise: especially when submitting to a contest like this where jurors have so little time to spend with each submission/statement. 

I also don’t know if you need to include the words with their definitions beneath the photographs. I think you can say everything in the statement and then rely on the viewer’s intellect to realize that what they are seeing are prime examples of what those words represent. Perhaps you can include those exact words in your statement and then give an example of how that plays out in the woodland environments. But my sense is that this project could exist as two separate entities: image and text. 

Otherwise, I haven’t talked about the images themselves. And I personally find myself getting lost in the beautiful, dense, and elaborate spaces you are creating/seeing. The compositions are complex, often surprising, and always seductive. These are hard landscapes to render, and it feels like you have an eye for figuring them out. 

It’s a pleasure to discover this series, Niki. Wishing you the best of luck. 

I responded:

From Niki South <niki.south@hotmail.com>

To feedback@lensculture.com

Subject: And as a reminder: this form is to provide feedback for the reviewer on your review. They receive the note, but will not be able to reply to additional questions on your submission.

Body: Thanks for the review. It comes at the beginning of my journey to ‘put my work out there’ , so is very timely.

I understand your message to be more explicit and concise when conveying my ideas to viewers/reviewers and thank you for the practical ideas that you have given that I can consider in a reformatting of the project. It was a very thoughtful, useful review.

Thank you!

Niki

My learning

The review was extremely useful, especially as I had woven parts of my draft PDF into (I used it as additional feedback for A1), it and it gave me some points to consider and edit for that and further reviews.

I heard much later (14.6.24) that my work had not been selected by the judges, but it had been another useful learning curve for me to submit with new criteria and purpose.