IPhone shot wins student the 2016 Simon Devitt Prize for Photography
Jodie Salmond, a postgraduate student of Elam School of Fine Arts, has been awarded the 2016 Simon Devitt Prize for Photography for her series of three images that she captured using an iPhone.
The theme for this year’s award was ‘a chance encounter’ and Salmond included two haiku poems in her series, which she titled When I’m Night Driving. Simon Devitt judged the competition and said of Salmond’s work that it was “beguiling and arresting”. He presented the award to her, and said that “The winning work took risks, pairing a familiar night road-trip scene with a close-up study of an aggregate surface and road markings, which were unsettling in their shift of speed and scale”.
Although the annual award has run since 2008, when Devitt established it at the School of Architecture and Planning, it was previously only open to architecture students. However, the 2016 competition was widened to allow students from the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries to enter. This year’s competition saw 70 entries submitted.
Salmond, who is in her final year of her Master of Fine Arts degree, won $1K, a trophy, and a Canon GX7 camera for her efforts.