Jury of the "VfG Nachwuchsförpreis", 2013

In 2013, I had the pleasure of being invited to sit on the jury of the 17th 'VfG Nachwuchsförderpreis', the most important Swiss competition for photography students which sees itself as a springboard, motivator and reflection platform for young up-and-coming photographers living in Switzerland.

I summarised the images and concepts of the ten most outstanding works of the 17th edition in the catalogue as follows:

"Once again, the discrepancy between conceptually, creatively and technically very mature and well thought-out works (about one third of the submitted projects) and rather amateurish picture series became apparent. It was also striking how often the importance of editing is underestimated or insufficiently mastered by many authors; a pity, because the art of omission (and the courage to do so) should definitely be in the foreground, especially in free works. Other thematically interesting projects with great potential suffered either from an exaggerated sentimentality or from a lack of expressiveness; for example, some exciting themes seemed rather pale in their pictorial representation and detached from the topic. But there were also positives: all the projects that reached the final round of judging were of a high standard, with a great balance between the entries from German and French-speaking Switzerland. Unfortunately, once again no works from Ticino made it to the shortlist; in this rather rigid part of the country there is a lot of catching up to do on a conceptual and design level."