The 40th New Cosmos Photography

Alec Soth
Expectations
What makes one photographic work stand apart from another? As a photographer, it is still a complete mystery to me why one image out of the thousands I take stands apart from the rest. So it would be disingenuous as a juror to try to quantify what I’m looking for. The best I can do is articulate what I’m not looking for. I’m not looking for someone who is trying too hard to make an impression. I’m not looking for someone to show off their technique or intelligence. I’m not looking for work of any given style or movement, nor am I looking for work that tries hard to create its own style.
I realize that this emphasis on what I’m not looking for appears negative. But my feeling is just the opposite. I love photography and want to respect the magical qualities of the medium. No matter how much effort takes place behind the scenes, the best work appears almost out of thin air. I’m not looking for a magician to show off how much time he’s spent developing a trick. To put it quite simply, I’m looking for magic.

Sandra Phillips
I am very happy to be the juror for this year’s Canon award. I would like to encourage you to look at the world and make pictures that challenge us viewers. Nowadays there is a tendency to look inward, and make pictures that reflect essentially what the photographer things, what his mood is, how he or she sees him or her-self. I believe this is a good time to look at the world again, to reconsider it, tosee what is happening outside the photographer’s own ideas and fantasies.

Dayanita Singh
What happens when we start to think of our photographs as raw material for various forms, including several that we do not even know as yet.
The first form for photography is the book, but can the book also be an exhibition? can an exhibition be a book? Must an image be still, could it be a moving still image. Or a still image that is moved after its making.
Ofcourse the raw material has to be strong and in your own voice, and that in itself takes time, but once we have this raw material, what form do we give it? I look forward to your submissions, your photographs in whatever form they ask to be seen in.

Yoshihiko Ueda
The act of taking a picture is, at once, the act of capturing oneself in one’s true state. In this sense, I think of photographs as mirrors that reveal yourself. For lurking somewhere in the background of every photo are the thoughts and emotions of the photographer.
Therefore, I want contestants to confront me with many tingling, heart-pounding, pathetic, sorrowful, tortured, and, yes, even cheerful photographs. I’m truly hoping to find photographs that will fascinate and dazzle me in these ways.

Hiraki Sawa
The New Cosmos of Photography began accepting movies for the first time last year. The movie function is accepted as an integral part of a DSLR today (or should I say nearly anything we call a digital camera). In fact, the Canon EOS 7D, which went on sale in 2009, played a part in the development of my own works. The technology that allowed me, with a single button at my fingertips, to switch easily between photo and movie modes caused the simultaneous disappearance and emergence of forms of expression.
With the emergence of the movie mode, photographers no longer necessarily require the skill to click the shutter and capture the exact instant of interest. And perhaps the real essence of expressions that pass through the camera ends up being how the artist treats the image. We push forward, exploring unforeseen possibilities in this new cosmos of photography. Borders between the many techniques of expression–from stills and images developed on paper to photo books, images without physical form and movies– have been blurred, and there is great potential in that uncertainty.
I'm looking forward to encountering works that cannot be expressed in words, that cannot be compared with technology, and that are not prisoners to any media or technique.

Tomoko Sawada
Ever since I started taking photos, it was my dream to win an award at the New Cosmos of Photography. The first time I entered however, I didn’t win anything, but my second entry picked up an award. Winning an award naturally gave me more confidence and courage to carry on with my later work, but the entire process of putting together, completing, and submitting my work was a great learning experience in itself. I’m hoping for works free of déjà vu, works that share a vantage point on creative values and unique worlds. So please get down to work and send in your best stuff.

Minoru Shimizu
“True-to-life.” “Natural.” “Savage.” Such abstract, ad-copy-like expressions that untrained observers of photography irresponsibly spit out have no currency. Even if their ability to take photos about photography and to observe photography is recognizable, it is meaningless to merely refer back to the history of photography. Please be aware that those works which rely on context for their profundity – whether the death of a blood relative, the death of a lover, or a great earthquake disaster – almost always automatically become part of a dreary continuum of uniformity.
Please single out your ideal subject, not your familiar acquaintances. And please show me your thought-out photos, your discovered photos, not your off-hand photos.
Digital technology continues to open up unknown realms in digital photography, which has already parted ways from just “not being” analog photography. Expressions that connect such unknown realms to the future and to the past, expressions that make me rediscover photography, those are the expressions I’m waiting for.