Back in February this year, I asked South Africans to submit photos for one of the world’s largest and most fierce competitions. To make participation easier, I arranged with the organisers (China Photographers Association) to collect the South Africans’ entries via PhotovaultOnline and then submit them as a bulk entry.
The judging took place in April in Zhuhai and I was invited as one of the international judges. The competition received a whopping 450,000 entries! Over 5 days, we had the task of selecting around 300 photos for the exhibition. That is an acceptance rate of 0.067%
The judging method is very different from ours in that I, as one of the 21 judges, only see a subset of one category. Using a process of rounds of elimination, by the end of the 4th day our category had a total of 200 photos. On the morning of the 5th day, our group of 4 judges sat together (for the first time) to select our 120 consensus photos. In the afternoon all 21 judges of the 3 categories sat together to select the 300 photos from the 360 shortlisted photos which then formed the 19th China International Photography Art Exhibition. We as judges never received the names or origins of the photos and I was lucky (or unlucky) to never recognise any South African entries in my subset of photos (I guess it was arranged that way…).
Only this month did we receive the official results and I was delighted to find that 5 South Africans will have photos in this prestigious exhibition.
Kathy Kay received 2 acceptances which is an extraordinary achievement in this scenario.
These other 4 photographers each received one acceptance:
• Ursula Baumann
• Jeanine du Rand
• Ingrid Orrock
• Patel Pitts
The exhibition will take place in Zhuhai from 2nd to 7 November as part of the Zhuhai International Photography Festival.
Johann van der Walt
Hon FPSSA, FPSSA, AV-LPSSA, SPSSA, FRPS, Hon CPA
Below are the photos which received acceptance.
Kathy Kay
Ursula Baumann
Jeanine du Rand
Ingrid Orrock
Pitts Patel
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