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Judges' Choice Winner:
From photographer Nick Swift:
“The photograph was taken on a cold January day on my way home from work near Hillsboro and West End. I came to a red light and saw the Volkswagen approaching the intersection. Instinctively, I grabbed my camera in the passenger seat and took the shot. I’ve lived in Nashville my entire life, and one of the greatest parts of living here is never really knowing what you’ll see just commuting through town. When I was younger, my grandmother would take me downtown to see all of the places that she had grown up around her entire life. It blew me away how large the city seemed. All of the businessmen and honky-tonk bar-hoppers seemed so interesting. Even though I am older now, the city hasn’t lost its charm. I’ve always had an interest in cameras, but didn’t pick up photography until my junior year of high school after I received an old Pentax SLR for Christmas. I’m in college now; still trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, but the one thing that I do know is that looking through the lens of a camera offers an entirely different perspective of the world around you. To me, this is the beauty of photography: being able to recapture the child-like sense of wonder of the people and places you might otherwise take for granted.”
Readers' Choice Winner:
Judges' Runner-Up:
Judges' Honorable Mention:
Judges' Honorable Mention:
Readers' Choice Runner-Up:
Finalists:
Meet the Judges:
Robin Paris
Robin Paris received her BA from The Evergreen State College and her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently chairs the department of photography at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville. She is most interested in art that participates in and engages with communities and has recently worked with a community of artists that collaborate with insiders at a local prison.
Rachel Briggs
Rachel Briggs is an art director and illustrator based in Nashville. Formerly art director at American Songwriter, with a stint at Time Out Chicago, Briggs is back in Music City designing for local projects including the Poetry Sucks! series and Fond Object Records, as well as numerous show posters, album packages, music videos and set designs for artists including Little Big Town, Pokey LaFarge, Jason Isbell and Old Crow Medicine Show. Her work can be found online at rachelbriggs.com
Bill Steber
Bill Steber is a native of Centerville, Tenn. After graduating from MTSU with degrees in photography and English, he spent next 15 years making a name for himself in journalism, working as a staff photojournalist for The Tennessean in Nashville and winning dozens of regional and national photography awards, shooting everything from national politics to New York runway fashion to the Super Bowl. He is primarily known for his project “Stones in My Pathway,” a more than 20-year chronicle of blues culture in Mississippi, documenting the state’s blues musicians, juke joints, churches, river baptisms, hoodoo practitioners, traditional farming methods, folk traditions and every other cultural tradition that gave birth to or influenced the blues. Steber is currently a freelance photographer and musician living in Murfreesboro.
Christine Rogers
Christine Rogers is an artist from Nashville. She received her BA in anthropology from Oberlin College in 2004 and her MFA in studio art from Tufts University in 2008. She has exhibited widely across the United States and was in a two-person show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, in the fall of 2012. She was a Visiting Lecturer of Photography at Wellesley College outside of Boston from 2008-2011. From 2012-2103 Rogers was a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar completing research for her project “Photographing Imagined Landscapes: The Switzerland of India.” Her work has been written about in Time Out Bengaluru, The Bangalore Mirror, The Hindu, New Landscape Photography, Hyperallergic, Dazed Digital, The Tennessean and the Nashville Scene. She is an assistant professor of photography at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film.
Michael W. Bunch
A Kentuckian by birth and a photographer by nature, Michael W. Bunch has spent the past 19 years chasing the light, and the occasional storm, all over the U.S. and abroad. He now spends his time shooting for the Nashville Scene and various other SouthComm publications. When not behind the camera, you’ll find him seeking out a nice camping spot (preferably near the water) or walking his whippet puppy, Ichabod.
Eric England
A lifelong Tennessean, Eric England began taking photographs in the late ’70s with a Kodak 110, following in the footsteps of his father who was a photographer in Sparta, Tenn. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University in 1988 with a degree in mass communication, he moved to Nashville and worked as a photo assistant before heading out on his own as a freelance photographer. He became the Nashville Scene’s staff photographer in 2004 while continuing to shoot for a variety of publications and corporate clients. He has won numerous awards, including a first place for photography in the national Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s AltWeekly Awards in 2011.
