National Art Photography Exhibition 2008: Awakening Breakthrough Creativity
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| "Sparkling on the River" - Silver Medal winning work by Nguyen Van Khanh |
“There should be no need to force a Gold Medal...”
This year, there are 4,241 photos by 1,081 authors from 62 provinces and cities participating in the exhibition, nearly 2,000 more works and 143 authors than the 2006 exhibition. With a very broad theme: The beauty of the country and people of Vietnam, the content of the photos in this year's exhibition is quite rich: From the theme of industry - agriculture to culture, landscapes in all regions of the country. Among them, the most prominent are groups of photos of landscapes, festivals, portraits, activities... exploiting from many new angles the beauty of the country and people of Vietnam. Most of the works participating in the exhibition are photos taken and processed using traditional methods. Photos processed and created using Photoshop software have had certain successes.
The Art Council established by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, consisting of 9 members who are prestigious experts in the field of photography, worked seriously and impartially to select 281 photos for exhibition. Obviously, the number of photos was outstanding, the number of participating photographers was large, and the topics were diverse and rich, the photos followed the theme and subject, but the lack of a Gold Medal made many insiders feel confused. The reason given by the Jury was that the general level of this year's works was better than previous years, but unfortunately there was no peak, there were no works with profound content and new forms.
Overcoming the ruts in composition
The jury had to eliminate many photos that had similar ideas in their compositions. To explain this, some people said that most of the current photographers are civil servants, so their time for creation is limited. In addition, the life of the photography team is generally difficult, so sometimes... "difficulty limits intelligence". It is understandable that when they come together to create works following the trend, their works are sometimes similar to each other. It is known that last year, the photographers had a trip to the salt region to create works, and this exhibition resulted in nearly 40 photos about salt!
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| "Mountain Fate" - Silver Medal winning work by Chu Quang Phuc |
The biggest achievement of the 25th National Art Photography Exhibition is the fairly uniform quality of the photos, which are humane and have high social significance. In particular, the fact that the 14 award-winning authors are not members of the Vietnam Association of Photographic Artists but are amateur photographers who are active in local photography clubs or working freelance shows that the exhibition has gathered a large number of photographers in general; the number of young photographers participating is also balanced with the number of famous photographers... On this positive aspect, there is a basis to hope that Vietnamese photography will have more creative breakthroughs. It is from domestic photography competitions and exhibitions that the Vietnamese professional photography movement has taken steps to mature and gain confidence to succeed in the international arena as in recent years.
4 Silver Medals:"Sparkle on the River"by Nguyen Van Khanh (Ho Chi Minh City);"Highland contours"by Tran Thanh Phan (Bac Ninh);"Hoi An Ancient Town"by Pham Thi Thu (Ho Chi Minh City);"Mountain fate"by Chu Quang Phuc (Vinh Phuc).
There were also 10 works winning Bronze Medals and 16 works winning Consolation Prizes.
According to Culture