2022 judging panel
The Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women is proud to announce its judging panel for 2022. Juno Gemes has spent four decades documenting the social landscape of Australia, in particular the lives of our First Nations people. Meredith O'Shea is a multi-award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker and Alison Stieven Taylor is an international photography commentator and journalist. What a privilege it is to have these incredible practitioners sharing their passion for photography with us this year!
Alison
Stieven-Taylor Alison Stieven-Taylor is an international photography commentator, journalist and scholar. Her deep commitment to drawing focus on the role of photography as a conduit for social change has seen Alison interview more than 100 photojournalists and social documentary photographers from around the world. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Weekend Australian, Weekend Financial Review, World Press Photo Witness, the French journal The Eye of Photography, ABR Arts and Pro Photo magazine. Alison has been a speaker at numerous photography festivals including Head On Photo, Auckland Festival of Photography, Pingyao International Photo Festival and Photo2021. She’s been a juror for various awards including the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo, the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Photojournalism, APA and Stories. She’s been on the programme selection committee for festivals including Head On (2021 &2022) and Voice of Humanity & Hope Bangladesh (2019 & 2022). In 2019 Alison curated the exhibition The Female Eye, which features the work of four Australian female documentary photographers. The exhibition premiered at the 2019 Pingyao International Photo Festival. The following year a digital iteration of The Female Eye was presented at the Auckland Festival of Photography. Alison is currently writing her PhD on photojournalism and social change. She is a lecturer in media communications at Monash University. She is also the publisher of the widely-read weekly blog Photojournalism Now.
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Meredith O'Shea Meredith O’Shea exemplifies a photographer who engages with her subjects at a profound level of intimacy. Her no-nonsense method allows her to candidly pictorialize stories about Australian society. By immersing herself in the lives of ordinary Australians, O'Shea has captured hauntingly beautiful photographs of her subjects at their most vulnerable. Her work as a photojournalist has brought heartbreaking and inspiring stories of human struggle and triumph to the front pages of The Sunday Age and Good Weekend Magazine for over 18 years. She has also worked regularly with other media outlets including The Guardian Australia and Sydney Morning Herald, as well as many corporate clients. O’Shea’s work has been exhibited and highly acclaimed internationally, featured as a core artist at Ballarat Foto Biennale, Head On, Pingyao International and Tetsuson festivals. As a multi-award winning photographer and film-maker, she has won numerous awards, including the Media Peace Award, the Quill for documentary, Australian Photographic Awards (portrait category) and numerous Mumbrella Publishing Awards. Meredith’s innate ability to connect with her subjects in a uniquely personal way allows for a rare and often brutal honesty in her photographs. As a happily married mother of two, Meredith has most recently been quietly documenting the most important people in her life -- her family: turning the lens inwards and sharing this inner sphere with us. https://www.runningblueproductions.com/ |
Juno
Gemes Hungarian born Juno Gemes is one of Australia’s most respected contemporary photographers. In words and images she has spent 40 years documenting the changing social landscape of Australia, in particular advocating recognition and respect for the lives, cultures and struggles of Aboriginal Australians during this seminal period. Gemes was one of ten photographers invited to document The Apology in 2008 and continues to photograph major political events. Among her 25 solo exhibitions, Gemes' Proof Portraits from the Movement 1976-2003 at the National Portrait Gallery Canberra toured for five years in Australia and the USA. Her survey exhibition The Quiet Activist at Macquarie University Art Gallery was featured by Head On 2019. Gemes' portraits of writers and artists have been widely published and exhibited in Australia, USA, UK and collected by The National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Museum of Australia, State Library of NSW and other major institutions. Her photo essays have been published in The Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald, The Monthly, The Guardian, The Age,The National Times,The National Indigenous Times, Heat, The Journal of Aboriginal Studies, and in many documentary films including The First Australians by Rachael Perkins. www.junogemes.com |