Win $20,000 in Cash Prizes By Entering All-About-Photo.com’s The Mind’s Eye Photography Awards

Be sure to check out our friend All-About-Photo.com’s first ever photography awards. The competition offers $20,000 in cash prizes, and winners will have their work showcased at Jules Maeght Gallery in San Francisco in May 2016.

Here is some more information on The Mind’s Eye Photography Awards:

All About Photo is pleased to announce the call for entries for our first ever photography awards: The Mind’s Eye. The title of the competition and exhibition is a reference to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s essay in which he states:

“To take photographs means to recognize – simultaneously and within a fraction of a second – both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis”.

What Cartier-Bresson saw and responded to and captured with his lens…he and his decisive moments changed the trajectory of photography as we know it. He was also precise when he said that photographs that span a life time are few and far between: “Any photograph you can look at over and over again….not many, not many.” And here we are launching a contest to find those images. Those pictures that last, that engage our minds and our souls, that make not only make us stop, but draw us in and hold us there.

There are 10 jurors for this competition, amongst them photographers, gallerists, curators, all of us eager for this experience, eager for pictures that make us see anew this world that surrounds us.

Often times, with competitions like this, there are cash awards and an on-line gallery, but this time there is something refreshing: an actual physical exhibition in a brick-and-mortar space. And in a great city too: San Francisco, a place Cartier-Bresson visited in 1960 while with Magnum. Besides significant cash awards, selected artists will be exhibited at the Jules Maeght Gallery in the thriving Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. The Maeghts have a long history in the art world. The Galerie Maeght opened its doors in Paris on December 6, 1945 with an exhibition of drawings Henri Matisse had made during the war, and immediately became the epicenter for modernist artists and writers. Aimé Maeght, the gallery’s founder and a publisher of limited-edition artist books, began his art career in the South of France with his wife Marguerite.

The Maeghts had an unparalleled eye for quality, combined with skill for nurturing and promoting new art and artists. These essential qualities secured their position as respected and influential advocates for art of their time. From 1946 onwards, such artists as Bonnard, Braque, Calder, Giacometti, Léger, Rouault among many others became part of the gallery.

Seminal exhibitions such as “Le Surréalisme” curated by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in 1947 changed the course of art-history and exhibition-making. In June 2014, the Maeght Foundation in St. Paul de Vence, founded by Marguerite and Aimé Maeght in 1964, and now entrusted to their son Adrien Maeght and his children, celebrated its 50th anniversary showcasing its world-renowned collection which includes some of the most important oeuvres of European Modernists.

Jules Maeght, Adrien’s son, a specialist of art editions and publications, has opened his first gallery in San Francisco. Pioneering and exploring new vistas, Jules Maeght continues the Maeght family legacy of passion, adventure, and a commitment to artists and creative experimentation in this new San Francisco gallery which will host the winning images from The Mind’s Eye.

While the theme of this competition is open and the jurors diverse, one must remember that Cartier-Bresson helped develop and nurture the genre of street photography. All photography processes are welcome and the deadline to submit images is January 31st, 2016. This is far enough away that it might be worth it for all of us to dust off our cameras, film and digital, and go forth with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s voice in our heads shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

For more information about the competition and how to enter, please visit our website: www.all-about-photo.com