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The Suffolk Art Gallery held its 41st Annual Juried Photography Exhibit on Saturday, March 8. With juror Heather Evans Smith, 300 photos from 79 photographers were submitted. From those, 50 photos from 37 artists were selected to be in the show. The exhibit will be on view through April 18. 

James Talley’s “A Day at the Market” won best in show. Alyssa Strackbein won second and Katie Culver won third. Dannis Doles, Monika Chuchro, and Michael Schimmel got honorable mentions.  

Smith is a conceptual photographer based out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and said she considered both technique and emotion when selecting pieces for the exhibit.

“[Judging] was difficult because there is an open theme, so you get all kinds of different work,” she said. “I looked at, of course, like technique, but then I also looked at originality, things that, you know, made me feel a certain way. So those are kind of the things I was looking for. Maybe it was something I’d never seen before, or done in a different way.”

There was a lot of landscape photography submitted, Smith said, so when narrowing those ones down, she focused on lighting and overall composition.

Smith said she chose Talley’s “A Day at the Market” for best in show because of how it drew her in and captured her attention, even displayed on a computer screen.

“I just loved the composition of it, and especially since it wasn’t a set-up photograph,” Smith said. “And the contrast, the angle, how it was shot from above, and it was a unique experience, because we don’t really see those kind of markets here. That really struck me.”

As an amateur photographer of 10 years, Talley said there was a lot of “extraordinary” photography on display and he was “very pleased” to be featured.

His winning photo, “A Day at the Market,” was taken at a market in Ghana. The people in the market had hesitations about being photographed, so Talley said in order to achieve a candid shot, he set up his camera and pointed in one direction, causing people to look away from the camera while still getting a very natural shot.

Jennifer Lucy, cultural arts coordinator at the gallery, put a lot of thought into how the photos were displayed in the exhibit. She said she pays attention to the colors, contrast, frames, perspective, and orientation when deciding how to put everything together.

“I actually will print out mini images of all of the work, and I’ll just continue playing with different arrangements,” Lucy said.

The exhibit was split into two sections: black and white, and color. Within those categories, Lucy said she noticed other recurring themes that influenced what pieces she displayed next to each other.

One thing she noticed this year, she said, was an abundance of circular shapes in the black-and-white photos. There were also a few nostalgic childhood scenes and some portraits.

The exhibit also allows viewers to buy pieces at a 70/30 split. 70% of the selling price goes to the artist and the rest goes to the gallery.  

Lucy said she was happy to see how affordable most of the pieces were, and she likes that the exhibit allows people to buy high quality art at a good price.

In regard to who tends to apply for the exhibit every year, Lucy said it’s usually a mix of professional and amateur photographers. 

“Especially new artists or people that have never shown in a gallery before, it’s great because they can get their feet wet and have that experience,” she said. “Some of them have, like, full blown professional businesses, some of them are more starting out. So it’s a great range of everybody.”