Introduction
Every photographer faces a set of moral and political choices about how to use their camera and how to represent the people they depict. No camera is a passive bystander, simply and passively recording some external reality; cameras have the point of view of their owners. Is the camera a weapon, reducing the powerful to mere mortality (like Richard Avedon) or making the familiar strange and grotesque (like Diane Arbus)?
Rachel makes a choice to go the other way, in the tradition more of Dorothea Lange or Eve Arnold, reminding us of the simple dignity and even breathtaking beauty of the people over whom the economic machine runs in the march towards profits. Her photographs of Maasai women or Guatemalan peasant women reveal a resilience and grace that is poetic in its simple beauty.
The Winners for 2008
First prize, Haruna Miyagawa Fukui, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Department of Sociology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3701 USA, for her photo and commentary entitled "Bonsai in the Middle--Detachment and Incorporation" and her commentary on Rachel's photo entitled "Guatemalans boarding bus."
Second prize, Vanessa Nichole Dodd. Department of Sociology, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1356, USA for her photo and commentary entitled "AIDS awareness in the Caribbean" and her commentary on Rachel's photo entitled "Guatemalan fruit plate."
Third prize, Nandi Dill, Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY 10012-9605, USA,for her photo and commentary entitled "Woman on street" and her commentary on Rachel's photo entitled "Cuba boy w Bike n game."
