Why is bland good enough for this competition.
Lets face it if you watch a cookery competition on TV no one wins with a Tesco supermarket meal deal do they, so why is plain ordinary good enough for a photography portrait competition?
Why hasn't the photographer needed to show a degree of skill above the normal, why isn't the concept something special, why isn't the execution of the idea done with somekind of panache?
Why has the winner turned up with a meal deal and popped it in the microwave and walked off with the prize?
That Kobel prize winner, anyone thats ever owned a camera has taken one like that............then discarded it for something better. I think this is a shockingly poor competitionr and yes I do get it, I get what the pictures are about, I don't dislike them...but honestly they shouldn't be winning prizes.
In a World where everyone thinks they are a photographer stuff like this proves to them they are.........bland is the new vivacious obviously, the competition is now who can be the most bland and detached.
No doubt they don't call it bland but deep and insightful....still if it walks like a duck and quacks like a ......you know the rest.
http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/twppp-2015/exhibition/prize-winners-entries/first-prize.php