Sea Point Promenade exhibit: Photographers invited to rethink the image

3 min read
Twenty selected photographs will be transformed into large-scale artworks along Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade.
Twenty selected photographs will be transformed into large-scale artworks along Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade.Picture: Supplied.

When does a photograph become art?

The question sits at the centre of this year’s Orms x Canon Promenade Exhibition, which returns to the Sea Point Promenade for its seventh edition with a theme that asks photographers to move beyond simply capturing what is in front of the lens.

“The Art of Photography” comes at an interesting time for Cape Town’s photography scene.

The city is preparing for the second Cape Town Photography Festival, which will examine questions around truth and photography at a time when images can be edited, manipulated and increasingly generated with technology.

The Orms x Canon exhibition takes a different route, asking what happens when the photographer becomes the artist.

Photographers can enter images across genres including portraiture, landscape, still life, architecture, abstract and conceptual photography.
Photographers can enter images across genres including portraiture, landscape, still life, architecture, abstract and conceptual photography.Picture: Supplied.

Exhibition

It is a question that feels particularly relevant when taking photographs has become an everyday activity.

Most of us carry a camera in our pockets, photographing everything from sunsets and street scenes to friends and family. But an image does not necessarily become art simply because it is a good photograph.

For this year’s competition, there is no prescribed genre. Portraiture, landscape, still life, architecture, abstract and conceptual photography are all eligible, with the organisers looking for a clear creative point of view and intention.

That can come through composition, light, colour, perspective, timing or editing, with photographs encouraged to communicate an idea, emotion, story or atmosphere.

The exhibition will ultimately select 20 photographs to be produced as large-scale artworks along the Sea Point Promenade, taking the work beyond the gallery wall and the photographer’s screen and into a public setting.

The Orms x Canon Promenade Exhibition returns to Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade for its seventh edition.
The Orms x Canon Promenade Exhibition returns to Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade for its seventh edition.Picture: Supplied.

The competition has become a significant platform for local photographers over the past six years, with 120 photographers featured, tens of thousands of entries received and more than R500,000 awarded in prizes.

The seventh edition offers a further R100,000, with first prize valued at R65,000 and including a Canon EOS R8 body with an RF 28–70mm f/2.8 lens and a R10,000 ORMS Print Room voucher. Second prize is valued at R20,000, while third prize is worth R15,000.

For a city where photography is increasingly being used to document, question and interpret its people and places, the exhibition offers another way of looking.

The challenge is simple enough: not just to show what you saw, but to show us how you see it.

The Orms x Canon exhibition explores what happens when photographers move beyond documenting scenes to become artists.
The Orms x Canon exhibition explores what happens when photographers move beyond documenting scenes to become artists.Picture: Supplied.

How to enter:

Photographers can enter up to five images at a time, with unlimited entries permitted. Images must be submitted in landscape format as JPEG files of no more than 5MB each.

Finalists will be asked to provide high-resolution TIFF files for A0-size prints. Watermarks will not be accepted on final prints.

The competition is being presented as an opportunity for photographers to move their work beyond the screen and gallery wall and into the public landscape.

Submissions: The Art of Photography competition entry form.

Closing date: September 16.

THE NATIONAL