Juliette Gautron, PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology, has been announced as the winner of this year’s postgraduate photography competition. Juliette – who conducted her fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, northeast Colombia – impressed the competition judges with her striking and captivating images.
“These pictures were taken as I spent time with indigenous Wiwa friends”, she explains. “I accompanied them for a few weeks as they went to visit their family for new year celebrations in their home village, on the south side of the Sierra, near Valledupar”. For the judges, Juliette’s images – documenting the traditions of the Wiwa community – excelled in “creating a strong sense of place and intimacy”.
This year’s competition – the 11th annual celebration for postgraduate students to showcase their fieldwork photographs – brought together seven diverse and visually compelling entries. “We were privileged to witness the integration of anthropological inquiry and photographic skill”, said the 2024 judging panel: Iza Kavedžija, Tim Cooper, Adam James Smith, Natalia Buitron, Andrew Sanchez and Mike Degani. Alongside quality and content, special consideration was given to images which conveyed a richness of human life and experience.
Gol Tengis was awarded second prize for his PhD fieldwork photography focused on dance practices in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese ethnic autonomous region adjacent to Russia and Mongolia. For the judges, his entry “shines with vibrant storytelling, captivating use of colour and a good balance of variety and cohesion”. All Gol’s images – from the Tibetan Buddhist Cham ceremony of Hohhot to graduation performances of Mongolian dance students (shown) – were “unified by their exploration of cultural expressions”.
Third prize was secured by Sally Montgomery: a PhD candidate researching human-environment relations and conceptions of belonging on Lord Howe Island – a small, isolated island off Australia. Part of this research studies environmental scientists engaged in the devastating effects of plastic pollution on migratory seabirds. “This entry is notable for its emotional impact”, wrote the judges. “The affective pull of these images is their greatest strength, vividly communicating ecological loss and grief”.