Selected from 2,377 submissions from 92 countries, spanning six categories – Portraiture, Landscape, Architecture, Photojournalism, Conceptual and Best Emerging Photographer – this year’s thirty nominees are a celebration of some of the best contemporary photography the world has to offer. But whose work deserves to win?
This is your chance to have your say. The FSPA judges will be announcing their category and grand prize winners at the FSPA Awards ceremony in Osnabrück, Germany on 14 October. We are giving you the chance to choose your favourite nominee in each category, for a special People’s Choice Award which will be announced alongside the judges’ selections.
How to vote
The entries from the five finalists in each category are now being showcased here.
To vote for your favourite photographer in the ‘Conceptual’ category, visit the Facebook gallery and like your favourite images from each photographer’s series. You can like as many or as few of the images as you want!
Find out more about each photographer’s project below:
‘Tomb of Love’ by Claudia Reinhardt-Teljer
“In Tomb of Love, I recreate the deaths of couples who ended their lives in a suicide pact. The progression of events and the persons involved are based on true stories.
In many cases, political pressures were the reason for the suicide pacts; for instance, the Jewish Gottschalk and Klepper families who were under threat of deportation by the Nazis. Stefan Zweig was able to emigrate from Germany, but was unable to bear ‘the destruction of his spiritual home, Europe’. Arthur Koestler suffered from Parkinson’s disease and left this world by his own hand together with his wife Cynthia Jeffries at the age of almost eighty.
The spectacular death of Heinrich von Kleist and his girlfriend immortalised the unappreciated poet. Their bodies were found on the shore of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee. Less prominent were husband and wife Michael and Monika Stahl, who died together of asphyxiation by exhaust gases in their car. In a suicide note, they gave their fear of social decline as the reason for their act of despair.”
To vote for this photographer, visit the Facebook gallery.
‘Lifestyle’ by Frank Kunert
“At first glance, my photographs possibly don’t seem all that unrealistic. However, a closer look reveals that something in them is clearly not quite right. In fact, the reality they depict is one that cannot exist.
My subjects are miniature scenarios designed and realised through countless hours of painstakingly delicate and detailed work in which I ironically exaggerate my own experiences by means of a constructed environment.
At the end of this process, I transform the three-dimensional illusions into photographic images on film with a large format camera. For me, our lifestyle is most clearly manifested in the architecture around us. Architecture is a way of expressing the progress, hopes and visions of the human race – nevertheless, its realisation of our everyday world fails with glorious regularity and brings forth strange fruits.”
To vote for this photographer, visit the Facebook gallery.
‘Our Life in the Shadows’ by Tania Franco Klein
“This work is influenced by the pursuit of the American dream and contemporary practices such as leisure, consumption, media over-stimulation, eternal youth, and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday life. The project seeks to evoke a mood of isolation, desperation, vanishing and anxiety through fragmented images that exist both in a fictional way and a real one.
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han says we live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. We have left behind the immunological era and now experience an era characterised by neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression, attention deficit disorder, burnout syndrome and bipolar disorder.
The constant need to escape, to always look outside. My characters find themselves almost anonymous; melting in places, vanishing into them, constantly looking for any possibility of escape. They find themselves alone, desperate and exhausted. Constantly in an odd line between trying and feeling defeated”
To vote for this photographer, visit the Facebook gallery.
‘Illusions’ by Geo Peng
“There is an old Chinese saying – “No joke without a crazy idea, no story without a coincidence”. It means that keeping to the beaten track is boring and dull; mistakes and things that go wrong are what create entertainment. Movies and plays misplace everyday character and events, ending up with stories and significance. What I have photographed are common people and natural views; combined and mixed together in one scene, forging these “funny” or “meaningful’ pictures. An artist creates a piece of their reflection of the world, which could be the illusion of your heart as well.”
To vote for this photographer, visit the Facebook gallery.
‘Sniper’ by Matt Hulse
“I shoot people in Asia from the top of tall buildings using a cheap mobile phone and a $9 telescopic lens.”
To vote for this photographer, visit the Facebook gallery.
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Be part of this year’s judging and vote for your favourite to receive the People’s Choice Award at this year’s awards ceremony for the Felix Schoeller Photo Award. Visit the Facebook gallery to vote.
Sponsored by Felix Schoeller Group: This feature was made possible with the support of Felix Schoeller Group, a world leader in photographic paper since 1895. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.