選考員からのコメント
このプロジェクトは、実現性とそのストーリーテリングの強さが相まったテーマで、とても大切な写真物語が仕上がるだろう。Katieは、写真言語だけでなく、作品制作の経験も豊富で、重要な問題に取り組むと同時に、写真的に強く美しいものを創り出すという二重の可能性が、このGlobal Grant Awardの受賞につながった。
Alexandrov Klum
2022年9月にスタートした「GFX Challenge Grant Program 2022」は、大きな反響を呼び世界中から応募が集まりました。選考は3ヶ月かけて行われ、地域別に実施された一次、二次選考、外部審査員を招きグローバルで実施された最終選考を経て15名の受賞者が決定しました。これより「GFX Challenge Grant Program 2022」の「Global Grant Award(大賞)」受賞者の5名と「Regional Grant Award(優秀賞)」受賞者の10名を発表いたします。15名の受賞者はこれから作品制作に取り組みます。2023年8月末に作品完成を予定しており、11月に弊社本社ビルにて本企画の写真展にて作品を発表します。随時情報もアップデートいたしますので乞うご期待ください。
富士フイルムが主催する「GFX Challenge Grant Program」は、創作意欲あふれるクリエイターの制作活動サポートを目的とした助成金プログラムです。受賞対象となった撮影企画への制作活動のサポートとして、「Global Grant Award(大賞)」受賞者の5名に10,000ドル相当の助成金が、「Regional Grant Award(優秀賞)」受賞者の10名に5,000ドル相当の助成金が提供され、さらに、制作に使用する機材として、GFXシステムカメラが無償貸与されます。
2023年10月15日(日)をもちまして応募受付を終了いたしました。
たくさんのご応募ありがとうございました。
The Last Reindeer
選考員からのコメント
このプロジェクトは、実現性とそのストーリーテリングの強さが相まったテーマで、とても大切な写真物語が仕上がるだろう。Katieは、写真言語だけでなく、作品制作の経験も豊富で、重要な問題に取り組むと同時に、写真的に強く美しいものを創り出すという二重の可能性が、このGlobal Grant Awardの受賞につながった。
Alexandrov Klum
Family Stuff
選考員からのコメント
ポートレート撮影にとどまらず、現代社会を暮らす人々の一面を切り取るドキュメンタリーでもある大変興味深いテーマです。隅から隅まで小さなディテールを描写するために、GFXの必然性もあります。
富士フイルム
The Reading of the Environment
選考員からのコメント
アンデスという言葉が永遠性を感じさせるのは、古代文明の存在があるからだと思います。その祖先の知恵のイメージを再現し、デザインすることが、今年一番の「チャレンジ」であるはずです。最大限の期待を持って作品の完成をと待ちたいと思います。
千葉康由
The Whisper of Soil
選考員からのコメント
複数メディアの融合を試み、アーティストと鑑賞者間のインタラクティブなコミュニケーションを探る大変興味深いプロジェクトです。また、彼の写真は、とても繊細で美しく表現されています。
佐藤正子
カリバリー島 - 生の記憶を辿る
選考員からのコメント
非常に美しい写真と、ローカルでありながら普遍的でもある非常に重要なテーマで、多くの人に啓示を与えるだろう。歴史的、人間的な側面が、非常に深く、繊細に扱われています。この作品は非常に大きな可能性を秘めており、間違いなく深い感動を呼ぶシリーズになるだろう。
Pauline Vermare
PhotArch - an image of the past
Daniel Lindskog(スウェーデン)
The Realm of Eternal Darkness in Invisible Light
Ágnes Berentés(ハンガリー)
The Philippine Flora: Portraits and
Still Lifes in Diptychs
Jan Mayo(フィリピン)
Underwater China Season 2-Spotted seal
Zhou Fang(中国)
2023年11月10日(金)から11月30日(木)まで、フジフイルム スクエアにて「GFX Challenge Grant Program 2022 ~Make Your Next Great Image~」を開催いたします。
詳しくはこちら
本プログラムの詳細はこちらをご覧ください。
Katie Orlinsky
米国
Qingjun Huang
米国
Sharon Castellanos
ペルー
David Gaberle
チェコ
小原一真
日本
Carly & Jared Jakins
米国
Elizabeth Moreno
メキシコ
Daniel Lindskog
スウェーデン
Madeline St Clair
イギリス
́Ágnes Berentés
ハンガリー
Lydia Matata
ケニア
Jan Mayo
フィリピン
Tania Malkin
オーストラリア
Yu Jia
中国
Zhou Fang
中国
The project developed very well, from the creative, through the technical, till the acceptance of the community. The work was artistic/documentary, managing to express a problem wich affects the Province of Buenos Aires and extends throughout the country.
Personally, I am very happy with the contact I made with the community. Experiencing the human quality of these territories ratified the importance that inspired me to make theme visible through images, a process that allowed to condense me, meet them, feel ourselves in a time, in its space; it was poetic.
I did definitely enjoy working on the project, not only with the results themselves, but also the wider boundaries the project did extent my visions. I am certainly happy with the results as they have met expected standards.
Dealing with macro subjects, technical challenges are the main enemy. For completion of focus stacking, we need around 70 - 200 photos with overlapping DoF for one stacked result. Too small numbers of photos would result in some blurred areas of final images while too many photos would take up huge memory capacity and would unnecessarily extend time for processing stacking result. It was a matter of finding balance. Another major challenge is environmental controls. These included how to move the camera vertically and horizontally along the specimens with as little discrepant as possible and how to lighten the insects with distinct shapes and textures.
However, along the project way, I have learned and found even precise details and technique that can elevate the results to the even higher levels. And I am happy with this overall processes of development.
My own 22-year cave adventure shooting has gone through a 135 film camera, DSC camera, APS-C format, full-frame. And this time I used the GFX medium format camera, which gave my cave adventure photography career a complete shooting experience.
Some of the underground halls shot in this project required hundreds of meters up and down, and some needed to use rubber boats through the underground river. I have been to three, but I have never been to the other two locations before. Therefore, I had to do some homework and consultation beforehand to know the location. For a few months, it can be described as hardworking and full of hardships. The success was strongly supported by teammates and friends from various places.
Though the project is complete, I still think that the world on the surface is not short of me to shoot records. My studio is still on the dark cave. There are many rare wonderful hidden in it waiting for me to explore and discover and present it. I will continue to shoot in the form of a special topic.
After seeing the final photos I am very happy with the result and I am looking forward to people seeing them too, hopefully, this can bring a better understanding of the impact climate change is having on this part of the world.
This was my first time using the GFX system and also my first time shooting in medium format. I usually shoot with a full-frame DSLR and after years of using the same camera, it becomes like an extension of you. Once I switched and started to use the GFX50S II (the camera I chose), I loved how it felt on my hands. It is very ergonomic and the camera does adapt to the user’s necessities so rapidly that I felt really comfortable using it. The RAWs are top quality and give you room to be as creative as you want without compromising the final image, it is really a dream camera for any photographer.
Looking into the future I wish to keep working on stories about climate change through local and collaborative narratives while incorporating a mix of technologies that can help with it. However, I'd love to keep adding the atemporal beauty of medium format to them.
The project went well and is still ongoing - and I suspect it will be for some time. For now, I am happy where things currently are.
The way I work takes time to plan, but also I have to allow things to flow organically, that’s a big part of the creative process. You have to accept that some things you planned won’t work like you want, some happy accidents will also occur and so any project will inevitably change as it goes on.
Weather is a huge part of this and of course cannot be controlled. During my shoot I encountered huge wild fires making it impossible to shoot locations I had wanted to, but there was nothing to be done to change the fact. I ended up choosing different locations but also documenting some of the consequences of the fire too, and perhaps that will become another project in the future. During something like that you understand how small you are and how tragic and huge the current climate situation is, and you just can’t help but put things into perspective.
The project will go on for a while longer in different locations. I am hoping to bring it out in installation and printed form once I feel it is ready
From the seas to the mountains I trekked in my quest to capture beautiful portrait images of some of the worlds’ most precious insects. Not precious in monetary terms however in global ecological circumstances they are worth their weight in gold. Insects are the base pollinators of all our food sources and their populations have been found to be in sharp decline worldwide. This is a disastrous situation and I have chosen this as my project, entitled ‘The Underworld’. The format of my project is images taken in a macro style showing close up detail of this tiny world of insects. Travelling over 13,000 kms in the allocated period of the GFX Challenge I photographed insects in four different ecoregions around Australia. From elevations of as high as 1800m, I collected images of vastly different subjects across the alpine montaine through to the sandy dunes of the ocean. This project has been a passion project for me and it was through the generosity of Fujifilm (Japan) via the Fujifilm Challenge Grant that gave me the impetus to complete my project and resulting book.
It has been a wonderful experience working with the GFX platform. The camera body is built like a tank and the optical quality of the lenses are unmatched. The quallity of the footage shot while filming of the project has exceeded all my expectations. The Project had some external factors delaying it. 1. The delayed arrival of the South West Monsoon rendered the Nilgiris unsuitable for the look we were trying to achieve. 2. Mr. Iqbal had a fall which required him to take rest. Following which he tested positive for Covid-19. This set us back by 67 days.
Going forward, we intend to enter this project in film festivals. My writing partner and I are also developing a script for a children's feature film and intend to use the GFX body with primista lenses for filming.
In the three ten-day periods of the hot season which in old sayings described as "Pure sun in June and fluid fire in July", I wandered through the Qin Jin Grand Canyon of the Yellow River, from west to east, with GFX100S. It was a 28 days’ road trip from Tuoketuo County in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to Yumenkou in Shanxi. This camera has withstood the trial of extreme hot weather. When the camera was continuously exposed under the strong sunshine, under the alternation of "high temperature warning" and torrential rain, it has excellently completed this project.
Especially while shooting Hukou waterfall of the Yellow River in the rainstorm, besides the downpour, there were also yellow mud spots splashing around due to the water drop, mist in the canyon, and water dripping from the rocks above, which soaked my clothes. But the camera was still capable of shooting normally when switching lenses back and forth, which made me felt a lot at ease in my later creation, and no need to feel uneasy about not carrying a spare camera.
The images of active volcanoes we have seen up until today are those that have been photographed through timely dispatch of a shooting team upon eruption, those obtained from nearby residents, or those of visible light captured with satellites. I wanted to see an active volcano as a photographer through the eyes of temperature - not through the eyes of a scientist or a geologist. I expected to see things that I had not been able to up until now if I could see an active volcano whose eruption one cannot predict through the eyes of temperature. I had faith that it would help me comprehend the underlying 'anxiety' in life in the time of Corona even in the slightest bit after seeing the volcano. There are many responses to the question of why I was visiting an active volcano but I had been answering that it's because there are things that can only be observed and felt at an active volcano to achieve order in one's inner world and growth of one's soul.
選考員による講評
佐藤正子
キュレーター 株式会社コンタクト
最終選考に残った15名の多様なテーマによるプロジェクトは、いずれも動機づけが明確でクオリティも高く甲乙つけるのに難航した審査であったが、多くの新鮮な刺激をもらえた有意義な時間でもありました。技術の発展と優れたクリエイターとの幸福な出会いの積み重ねが、培ってきた映像表現の歴史の新たな扉が開かれるのが楽しみです。
Pauline Vermare
キュレーター、写真史家、作家
レベルの高さ、そして多様な声やジャンルが表現されている、全体的なセレクションに非常に感銘を受けました。また、受賞者の最終的な作品を見るのが楽しみです。そして、この国際的なイベントを巧みに企画した富士フイルムに、心から祝福を送りたい。
千葉康由
フォトグラファー
写真で何を伝えられるのか、15人の写真家が様々な方法やテーマで挑むことが決まりました。この新しいグラントにより、カメラなどへ自由にアクセスすることが難しい国々にいる写真家にも、同じように機材と機会が与えられ挑戦することができます。世界中の写真家の才能を照らし更なる活躍へとつなげてくれる、新しい写真の登竜門が生まれたことを実感しています。
Alexandrov Klum
アーティスト&保護活動家
最終選考で、多くの感動的で力強い撮影企画が競い合ったことを嬉しく思い、興奮しています。写真と動画映像の両方のプロジェクトが混在しているのが素晴らしい。テーマは多岐に渡り、個人的なストーリーから、映画やドラマ、アーカイブや歴史的なプロジェクト、平等や生物多様性、環境に対する意識を高めるプロジェクトなどさまざまなジャンルの作品が集まりました。