People’s choice voting for this year’s International Photography Competition & Exhibition concluded Monday, meaning winners will be announced in the coming weeks. Ryan McGraw’s photo submission (above) was taken in Seoul, South Korea and is one of the top 40 entries as voted upon by this year’s jury. Credit: Ryan McGraw
It is said “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and it seems like many Buckeyes would agree.
For over 20 years, Ohio State’s Office of International Affairs has organized the International Photography Competition & Exhibition, which allows students, staff, faculty, alumni and visiting scholars to explore the world’s everyday wonders via photography, according to the office’s website.
This year, the website states all competition photos must have been captured outside of the United States. Entrants can submit one photo per each of the three categories: People, Places and Arts & Culture.
Competition organizer Victor van Buchem said this year’s range of competitors is highly diverse, with over 300 photographers having submitted work taken in 92 different countries.
“I think we’re giving Ohio State Buckeyes an opportunity to share photographs of what they’ve captured around the world to show locations, places, subjects, topics in a new way and then a unique viewpoint from how they saw it when they were visiting, traveling or they live there,” van Buchem said.
Each year, van Buchem said entrants’ photos are submitted to a three-person jury and individually evaluated by each judge. The jury members then come together to determine the best 40 photos — which are subsequently featured in an exhibition — as well as the final winners in each respective category, he said.
Van Buchem said this year’s judges were all university staff members, including an editor of the alumni magazine, an Office of International Affairs public relations coordinator and an immigration coordinator from the same office.
Regardless of individual judges’ personal preferences, van Buchem said each year’s jury bases its selections on precise criteria.
“It’s about the work being original, about being artistic, high quality and capturing some moment in time,” van Buchem said. “This year, the judges really emphasized the photographs finding a unique vantage point and not being a snapshot that anybody could take by holding up their phone. So they really wanted them to sort of capture a moment or capture a cultural event or location in a different perspective than you might see normally.”
After this deliberative process, van Buchem said the Ohio State community can help choose the “People’s Choice” award recipient. Honoring one photographer per category, this accolade is bestowed on photos that garner the highest number of likes on the Office of International Affairs’ Facebook and Instagram accounts. Because the people’s choice voting closed Monday, van Buchem said the likes are being counted to determine the three additional winners.
Beyond social media, van Buchem said the winning photos will be presented to the general public in an exhibition at the Ohio Union, where a reception will also take place to announce this year’s winners. Though the exhibition’s opening date is unannounced at the time of publication, van Buchem said he anticipates that the 2023 winners’ reception will take place Nov. 15.
Ryan McGraw — a fourth-year in international studies and Korean — and Vaasavi Unnava — a graduate teaching associate in economics — are both competing in the Places category. Both students took their photos while studying abroad in South Korea and Italy, respectively.
McGraw said his photo was taken in a moment of spontaneity, after purchasing a zoom lens from an electronics market in Seoul.
“It was raining a lot and I was kind of just pointing my camera outside my window, playing with the zoom lens, and then I was just taking a few photos and just by chance, everybody in the streets was using a black umbrella,” McGraw said. “Then this one person was walking by with this really bright blue umbrella, and so I kind of quickly just took a picture of him right when he was in the middle of the street.”
Unnava, whose photo features an Italian woman as its subject, said the specific neighborhood she was visiting taught her how to fall in love with strangers, which is what she aimed to reflect in her submission.
“That photo really meant a lot to me because I’d see that girl very regularly,” Unnava said. “I’m sure she would see me, and we’d never ever talked to each other, but I think I’d always felt an affection simply because the way that she existed was already very beautiful.”
Ryan Staples — a video producer and director at WOSU — and Ariana Winbush — a fourth-year in English and Spanish on a pre-law track — are both competing in the People category. Winbush said she took her photo on her first trip out of the country and was inspired by Spain’s breathtaking culture.
“You see everybody kind of just coming together to do something as simple as play chess, especially in this garden that they’ve created to maintain their community,” Winbush said. “It was cool to see the older people teaching the younger people, kind of passing this not only just the game but the mentality.”
Staples, who also submitted a photo in the Arts & Culture category, said his eye was caught by a person next to a wall of Himalayan masks, which created a sort of mysticality when captured on camera.
“In Nepal, that was really just by chance that a young man had leaned out the window, and he was there among all those masks, and I was just struck by keeps the human face surrounded by these mythic faces,” Staples said.
Though the individual submissions of McGraw, Unnava, Winbush and Staples are all distinct, they all said taking part in this competition was a big first for each of them, and they were surprised to be selected as top-40 entrants.
“Just being able to participate is amazing for me,” Winbush said. “It’s cool to be, not compared, but on the same playing field as people who have done this for a long time.”
For Unnava, this competition has taught her the worth of her work.
“So much of what we do, we’re just sort of confused about like, ‘Are we good enough to do what we’re doing?’” Unnava said. “For most of my life, I think I’ve always made things and felt like ‘Okay, this isn’t good enough. No one has to see it.’ This was literally, I think, the first time I’ve ever applied into anything creative. So for me, I think most of it was surmounting and surpassing, like a lot of personal barriers to say like, ‘I have a creative voice that’s worth trying to ask other people to listen to [me].”
Staples said regardless of the outcome, he is honored to have competed.
“I’m just happy to be part of it,” Staples said. “All the photos are incredible. I was just looking at them just now. And I’m just happy and proud to be among so many great photographers.”
More information about the exhibition’s opening date and the winners’ reception can be found on the Office of International Affairs’ Instagram and Facebook, or on its website.
