So, should it have won? It’s the question that’s probably been on a few people’s lips ever since the 2017 Olive Cotton Award for portraiture was announced in late July.
The winning shot, Maternal Line by photographer Justine Varga, was definitely what you might call a ‘different’ take on the classic portrait shot. Featuring her grandmother’s scrawled pen marks and saliva on a piece of film, it was not shot with a camera, yet it still took out the top gong and received a $20,000 prize in what is easily one of our most prestigous photography competitions.
As you might expect, there’s been some robust conversations about its validity as a winner, to the point where judge Dr Shaune Lakin, a senior curator of photography at the National Gallery of…
