The 2012 Bowness Photography Prize received a record number of entries – in excess of 500 submissions – from which 42 finalists were selected and curated into an exhibition hosted by the Monash Art Gallery (MGA), Melbourne.
At the exhibition’s launch party last night, MGA Patron Penelope Seidler AM named Jesse Marlow winner of the 2012 Bowness Photography Prize. The street photographer was awarded the $25,000 prize for his work Laser Visions – a disorientating image of a chance encounter Marlow witnessed while wandering the streets of Melbourne.
Marlow states, “contrived photographic shoots and intricately designed set-ups have never interested me. Rather it is the uncertainty of street photography that continues to stimulate. The idea that I can leave the house one morning and come home at the end of the day with a photograph that will be with me forever constantly drives and excites me.”
MGA Director Shaune Lakin says Marlow’s “picture is in many ways the perfect street photograph: it is a candid image of everyday life, but one that makes the everyday seem both extraordinary and strange.”
The exhibition continues until November 18, 2012.
Image: Jesse Marlow, Laser vision, 2011, from the series Don’t just tell them, show them, pigment ink-jet print, 90 x 125cm
Courtesy the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne
