The Fascinating Winning Images of AAP Magazine 26 Shapes

We're delighted to reveal the names of the 24 talented photographers who won ''AAP Magazine #26: Shapes''. Thank you to my dear friend Ann Jastrab, the Executive Director of the Center for Photographic Art for being a juror for this competition.

For this 26th edition of AAP Magazine, we were looking for submissions of works of art that explore composition and form as a fundamental aspect of the photographic aesthetic, be it pure visual formalism or in support of a thematic objective. Understanding shape and form is one of the pillars of photography composition, and it can make even the most common object become a work of art. Geometric, organic, positive or negative, shapes contribute to a photograph’s overall esthetics and vibes.

We chose twenty-four photographers for their different approach to the idea of Shapes. Their work is diverse: architecture, mixed- media, still life, abstractions... and use different techniques & perspectives but each one showcases a unique point of view.

The Winner of AAP Magazine 26 Shapes is Mike Baker (USA)

Staircases have such personality; no two are the same. If one looks closely, several compositional elements can be observed and captured including lines, shapes, curves, repetition. The image captured here is at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

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The Second Place Winner is Maura Allen (USA)

It's easy to get seduced by the wonder of the West—the landscape, the running horses, the excitement that surrounds you at a rodeo. It’s when we slow down that the shapes and patterns of the place reveal themselves.

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The Third Place Winner is Guillermo Espinosa (Germany)

This photo was a so called lucky shot or a reflex shot. After walking during hours in the suburbs of Berlin, I saw the truck crossing the zebra and how the color fits with the traffic lights and the wheels matched with the traffic light shapes. Everything made sense for me in those seconds I was able to grab my camera, frame and shoot what i thought was an interesting image.

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MERIT GALLERY

Wayne Swanson (USA)

Expired Palms documents the battle in Southern California between two non-native species, the Canary Island palm and the South American palm weevil. The weevil’s larvae eat the interior of the palm’s trunk, eventually killing the trees. My vintage Polaroid SX-70 was the perfect tool for capturing their fading glory.

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Florian W. Mueller (Germany)

The Hong Kong Cultural Center in Hong Kong. On the one hand, the reduction to the architecture - without references to the surroundings - takes away the possibility of estimating the size of the building; on the other hand, the cloud gives an indication of precisely this size.

Barbara Hazen (USA)

Drawn to this old leather carriage strap found in a curiosity shop, I was immediately drawn to its texture and ability to bend into sinuous shapes.

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Ray Knox (UK)

I started photographing this series shortly after the introduction of the first lockdown as a way of alleviating my restlessness from being confined to home all day. I would venture out on my neighbourhood walks just after dusk when the streets were deserted and eerily quiet. The solitude I found wandering the streets was an almost meditative experience of simply observing as I walked It gave me the chance to explore my local surroundings more closely and notice things I had overlooked for years. What a revelation, streets so familiar during the day were completely transformed after dark. London is a dream location to spot classic cars, some tucked away in shadowy places, while others revel in the glare of streetlights. But the vehicles which really caught my attention and most intrigued me were the secretive ones, covered up, and shrouded in mystery.

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Tom Schifanella (USA)

An ongoing series revealing the inner beauty of these amazing and misunderstood creatures through photography.

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Gregory Spaid (USA)

Leaves occur in such abundance where I live as to seem worthless, and yet each one is astoundingly complex and beautiful, both in form and function. I think of each one as a microcosm for all of Nature. The photographs in my Leaf Cutting series are made without a camera. I make the "negative" by hand, a process from the 19th century known by the French term cliche verre. My process is a hybrid one and an experimental contemporary version of that earlier process. After making the "negative" by hand, using actual leaves and other materials, I scan it, process it digitally, and then print it as an archival inkjet print.

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Klaus Lenzen (Germany)

They can still often be seen in Berlin, windowless backyards and gable walls. With their special shapes, colors and structures, they unfold their distinctive charm.

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Stephen Albair (USA)

This series begins with a photo-transfer onto linen in which the original photograph is shredded into individual strands. Prismacolor pencil drawing enhances the photo, creating greater depth in a similar way as the hand-coloring process applied to historical photographs. The result exposes inherent qualities about both the image and the linen. Once framed, the individual strands swirl as if suspended in mid-air while revealing another dimension to the photograph.

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Beth Galton (USA)

Potato Love is a photographic series that explores the miraculous growth that emerges from a potato during its tenuous life cycle. I collected potatoes I found visually interesting at farmer’s markets and nurtured them as they matured and sprouted growth while in my studio. They began to take on their own human like personas which I looked to accentuate and capture in my photographs. I want these assemblages and portraits to connect the viewer to the ecological cycles of the natural world, including reflecting on their own aging and mortality.

Mitchell Anolik (USA)

I have had a penchant for minimalism. This series forces ones eye to focus only on the essential elements of the image. This is accomplished by totally removing all irrelevant material and applying a gradient over these areas.

Francesco Pace Rizzi (Italy)

The station F.S. of high speed designed by Zaha Hadid Architects in Naples-Afragola, an example of sustainability, functionality and modernity. The building has large windows supported by steel and concrete walls "flush" with the Corian cladding. To cover the station, a window covering over 6,000 square meters was created. From a technological point of view, the structure is oriented according to the best sustainability criteria: Solar panels integrated into the roofing of the canopies, combined ventilation and integrated cooling and heating systems make it possible to minimize the annual energy requirement.

Shesaidred (USA)

Women birth this planet. Period (no pun intended) Oocitos Ovarios photographs help me express my ideas about female bodily autonomy. Females have only so many oocytes upon birth whereas males can supply their contribution till death…. In these photographs, the red represents the oocytes and the decisions that may arise upon fertilization of those eggs. Fertilization is complex and can become more complex depending on circumstances, and a female can find herself fertilized against her wishes… only she should decide what is to become of her oocytes upon fertilization…

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Ellen Konar and Steve Goldband (USA)

This image captures a single face of wooded life, the symbols of strength, kinship and even life itself, cut short. We come to this photographic project with a degree of personal responsibility and regret. At the behest of our town, with a building permit in the offing, we removed an outcropping of “non-native” and therefore “invasive” redwood trees. The portraits of trees “cut short” are our tribute to the one-time inhabitants of our property and beyond who are no longer. The raggedly severed cross section serves as a portrait and memorial to the life that once served as an animal habitat, reduced the threat of global warming, and provided hope for the future of our planet.

Jacqueline Walters (USA)

When I began learning Mandarin little did I realize how it would inform my artistic vision. This became evident when I began to experiment with Lumen printing. With the former, I discovered how a seemingly endless permutation of lines, dots, and dashes written within an imaginary square formed meaning through simple and complex forms. With the latter, my thoughts shifted from acquisition of craft to learning a language. My series, “Learning Mandarin and the Language of Lumens,” is about learning a process that harkens back to photography’s beginnings, influenced by the visual poetry and rhythmic grace of an old writing system.

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Jaroslav Mares (Czech Republic)

The series of images "Verticals" was created during our holiday in Linz, Austria in 2021. The photos show unusual views of the light poles on the highway bridge over the Danube River. The morning backlight highlighted the silhouettes of the columns and their mutual arrangement.

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Synchrodogs (Ukraine)

‘Impossible Installations’ is a visual representation of human and technology merging together to create photographic project of sculptures that are too surreal to exist in real life. The project is a collaboration between Synchrodogs artistic duo and Artificial Intelligence, created in a truly innovative manner via using mixed media art to extract and redefine symbiosis achieved between human and technology in the last century.
Changing the environment in a surrealistic manner artistic duo aimed to highlight the rapid changes humanity is facing due to fast flow of innovation and progress. Observing the new ways the Earth begins to look like as a result of human interventions into the environmental processes, they created a series of works that balance between the real and the imagined, and are at the same time a visual reflection on the contrast between the past, the present and the future (which always remains unknown and unpredictable, leaving us some space for invention).

Torrance York (USA),

In Semaphore, I explore the shift in my perspective after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Through images, I consider what it means to integrate this life-altering information into my sense of self.

Ernie Luppi (USA)

As far as I can remember, I have been fascinated by shapes and textures and the effects of light and shadow when creating an image.

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MG Vander Elst (USA)

Floral images are my new center, through this process I am learning that by photographing the simple lines and the daintiness of these flowers they become an exercise in form, in juxtapositions and in letting go. By closely observing these living forms with their shifting shapes who then transition, mature and wilt thus creating this contrast in beauty, when blossoming or dying combined with their shaggy stalk versus the petal's ethereal texture generate this visual dissonance that captivate me. I am finding a swell of energy in this newfound freedom of moving in a place I have never been. The flowers become metaphors soaked with my daily emotions.

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Golnaz Abdoli (USA)

This is an image of the Mira Tower in San Francisco, California. The bay windows of these condominiums gradually twist in different directions to give this 400 feet high rise its dynamic quality.

Claudia Tombini (Italy)

There is a human sense to architecture, which comes before architecture, as we actually live our lives without it, in an unbroken series of passages, intersections, and places which all leave their own special resonance and memory within ourselves. As I move through these, without ever pausing in the gaps, I find myself measuring out the distances I have covered, trying to heal the wounds that the surface of things displays. There is no such thing as spacial distance. The distance in the landscape is actually temporal: living is an art of spacing, living is geography.

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