Intro | Juror's statement | Awards | Exhibitors

For nineteen years the University Art Gallery has sought to provide an opportunity for serious amateur and professional photographers to display, contemplate, and share their more artistic photographic prints by sponsoring the competition and juried exhibition, "The Photograph as an Art Object." Dr. Richard B. "Dick" Law, former Gallery Director and Professor of Art, Emeritus, began the annual competition in 1983 and sustained the project over the years, encouraging us to engage in visual dialog with the photographs and experience the aesthetic moments, ideas, and expressions conveyed by the images. The tradition continues in this year's exhibition, which features forty-eight photographs by thirty-four photographers presenting a wide variety of artistic approaches to visual expression through the photographic medium.

We have witnessed some changes over the years. This once-annual competitive photography competition is now in its fifth year in a triennial mode. Also, for the sixteenth exhibition, 2001/2002, the first in the triennial mode, we stated for the first time in the entry guidelines, "All forms of traditional and digital variations are acceptable." This change occurred largely in response to the increasing number of entries we received using digital media or having digitally manipulated images. To accommodate this characteristic, we felt the need to clarify what was still considered valid as a photograph. (The first examples of digital photographs I can recall were submitted in 1994 by Roger B. Bean from Morton, Illinois.) As this exhibition shows, the photographers continue to define their medium by its artistic application, both in traditional forms and in digital variations.

We thank our juror, Bruce Morton, for his selections and comments.
We extend our gratitude to all of the photographers who entered and supported the exhibition and to each of the exhibitors for sharing their photographs with us.

-John R. Graham, Curator of Exhibits