The 2015 XITEK NEW TALENT AWARD Finalist Exhibition

Preface

How to best organize a photography awards event? This is the problem for consideration at XITEK NEW TALENT AWARD this year. This award has entered its sixth year. Over this time, NEW TALENT AWARD has continued to inject new vitality into the China photography art world. However, more bold reforms in the reviewing procedure are needed if this award is to scale new heights.

In consideration of professional standards, we have put strong emphasis on the internationality, interdisciplinarity, and multi-identity of the judges chosen. We hope that this will contribute to more inclusive and open assessment results. Secondly, we have also reduced the number of finalists. Previously having twenty finalists, there will now be six, including one New Talent Photographer Award and five New Talent Nomination Photographer Awards. Such focus requires the judges to select the nominated photographers with greater caution and rigor. The intense debate of the preliminary meetings has proved that limiting the number of finalists brings tension. Furthermore, in order to strengthen the focus on young photographers, we have set an age limit of 35 this year. In order to better introduce the six shortlisted photographers to the public, we have greatly strengthened exhibition quality. To more perfectly present the creator’s work under limited circumstances is one of the future directions that we are working towards at NEW TALENT AWARD.

Canon (China) Co., Ltd. has always shown support for Chinese young photographers, and hence an EOS New Talent Award has been added in the NEW TALENT AWARD. Its aim is to uncover more talented young photographers among Canon users. The exhibition of the six finalist photographers and one New Talent EOS Youth Photographer Award is selected from nearly 70,000 submitted works from 4746 contestants. The seven participants of this exhibition are all 18 to 30 year-old young photographers. The styles of their works are diverse, but all reflect the youngest, most keen observation and thinking in Chinese photography. Their works strive to seek accurate and creative ways from different angles to find new possibilities of narrative and experimentation within photography. They are a new generation of photographers who are far away from the clichés of photography.

While being nominated and winning the award will be beneficial to the photographer, however the results of this activity are not of the greatest significance. What matters is that it might open a dialogue, and may perhaps truly provide a modest but practical contribution to the future development of Chinese photography.

FEI Dawei

Chairman of the Judges & Chief Curator

Exhibition site

《Towards Evening: Six Chapters》CHEN Zhe