Open Call: Notions of Home

photographs of your life that represents “home” to you

The Lucie Foundation is proud to announce Notions of Home,

an Open Call supporting the Lucie Witness Program: Visions from the Youth of America

Winners and Finalists Announced!

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Vikesh Kapoor: Our Childhood Swimming Pool

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Vikesh Kapoor: Our Childhood Swimming Pool

“See You at Home” is a personal narrative that centers on family, memory and the myth and melancholy surrounding the American Dream.

My parents immigrated from India in 1973, settling in a town of 10,000 people in rural Pennsylvania. They are one of few immigrant families in the region. While they left India for a better life, the shift from a collectivist nation to an individualistic one led to isolation just as much as it led to freedom.

“See You at Home” explores this dichotomy through images of my parents’ current life in America imbued with memories from their past.

FINALISTS

Sandra Cattaneo Adorno: Águas de Ouro

This series is part of my new book, Águas de Ouro. In this project, I explore my memories of Rio de Janeiro, the city where I was born and that I left as a child to go study abroad. My siblings and I weren’t allowed in the sun, but I could look and take in the light and the gentle movement of the people on the beach. As I revisited the city and the beach of Ipanema many years later, I tried to capture the memories that came back to me, transfigured by my experiences abroad and by the many changes the city has undergone.

James Barkley: Portrait of Jerry at home. East Boston, November, 2020

Being restricted to staying at home during the pandemic led me to take frequent walks around the block, to break out of my cabin fever. On one of those walks I met Jerry, who lives right around the corner from me. He is an East Boston native and hasn’t moved from the neighborhood in 76 years. He lives with his dog Charlie, who he adores. I ask him what ‘home’ means to him, and he tells me, “For me, when I think of the word ‘home’, certain things come straight to mind: safety, warmth, comfort, the smell of coffee, my dog and overall relaxation.”

Paula Dau: Paradox

In times of the Covid-19 pandemic, the notion of home expands, becoming even more latent and present in our lives. As a protective space, not only material, but also psychic and emotional, the home undergoes degradation processes. Humanized and individualized space, full of meaning and stories, the notion of home as a confinement necessity becomes claustrophobic, empty and meaningless. The days are always the same, inertia consumes the hours. Memories present themselves and move among past, present and future. An emptiness filled with homesickness.

Valerie Dubuc: How To Know If The fear Is Inside Or Out

This picture is from my project « Scattered » who emerged from my many relocations, hoping to finally find a place that would make me feel at home.

I’m wondering if the places we inhabit, as well as the objects that are part of them, are refuges where to find real security and rooting or do they rather serve us to flee the reality of our own anxieties in face of the world and therefore to close ourselves off? It’s the fine line between the two that I sought to show, making us more aware of our relationship to our homes and ultimately allowing us freedom.

Dmitry Ersler: Late back

Tverskaya oblast , June 2019. This photo was taken during my summer photography trip around my homeland in Russia. This picture is a part of the series called Russia at Dusk dedicated to my beloved mom and dad.

Angelo Formato: Grandma Luisa

This image is from a project series, tribute to the women who have played a main role in my life that have helped me to become the person I am today. I started this project in 2012 when I moved to England immediately after my studies, since then I have been able to rediscover the importance of family, which, for a person who lives or has lived far away like me, becomes more than ever a main point in life. During the last 9 years spent in London, I was going back home to Naples, the city where I was born, only for the holidays and to photograph the beautiful women of my family.

Maria de la Paz Gutierrez: Winter garden

The pandemic and the quarantine that stopped the world came into our lives without warning, without deadlines or instructions on how to deal with it. María de la Paz Gutiérrez photographed her daughters and sons in these days of quarantine. It’s interesting for the artist how her children will remember these months of confinement when they will be adults. What will be left of these times? The world we’ve inhabited until now is no longer here.

Henry Keith: JUNIA

My wife and I welcomed home our first child Junia. Her arrival has prompted the responsibility to begin most important photographic assignment I have ever had, our family album. Made with 35mm camera on black and white film.

O-Young Kwon: Washed Away

“[The water] came in the night. […] You wake up and all your rooms under water. […] Even our building blocks […] fall onto our beds and everything.

We [couldn’t] prepare anything at all, […] but because of the water force, we just left there. […] We just quickly run. I just came here with empty hands. My fishing net, my boat… the water carry all […] away. [I’m still] crying. And I’m praying for god to help me.

By all means if [this] island is finished. [The waves] will reach the second [island]. After that it will go to the third one. For sure!”

Jesse Ly: trust

This portrait of my partner explores the dynamics of viewing and portraying visual dynamics and relationships that occur between photographer and subject. Emphasizing the importance of a healthy and safe interaction between these are necessary in developing a strong architecture between the many relationships that lie with this image. These manifest as partners in our familial and home dynamics, as well as the existence of the shifting structure one behind and front the lens. Without a loving and safe nature, a healthy nuance of home dynamic may not exist.

Bart Michiels: Jesse on the couch (summer)

At Jesse’s, everyone was always welcome and invited to stay in his old farmhouse on Staten Island. He, a fervent nudist, held numerous potluck and holiday dinners for friends and neighbors where clothing was always optional. He kept the Christmas tree and the lights up all year long and left the presents untouched for months so that he could enjoy the festive anticipation longer. He never got to fixing his leaking roof but he always had time to throw those dinner parties for friends, making his place a home for us.

From “Limits of The City”. Shot on 8×10 color negative film.

Cree Moore: Reimagining Home

This ongoing portrait series explores an experienced connection between the sense of home found within my community of receptive-bodied humans and within the wildness of nature, the mother of us all.

I wanted to examine and document the practice of being vulnerable and bare in the natural world to better understand how this act can only connect us more deeply to our original conception.

Dana Mueller: At the Edge of the Village

In past years I have been photographing a German village where the forest became part of the no-mans-land and former border between East + West Germany. For those who lived close to it, this zone always presented an impenetrable entity and mystery. I grew up in the village and have been returning to my home each year to photograph. For the 40 years of its existence, the German Democratic Republic developed its own unique culturation within the confines of an authoritarian state. After unification 30 years ago the GDR ceased to exist, yet East Germans with their distinct identity did not.

Violeta Rodriguez: Mirror

The family can be a mirror. This image is my home, the built one. In this photo I recognize myself in that little girl who is my daughter.

Leon Syfrit: Gourmet Kitchen

I made the images for this project in 2013. At the time, I did not understand why I was taking the photographs; but the extreme conditions of my mother’s home, and the waning condition of her physical and mental state, compelled me to document her situation. Not long after creating these pictures, my mother died.

Jordan Tiberio: Nana’s Hand

This image is of my Nana’s hand, resting on the tea table in her garden. Growing up, she introduced me to art and the magic it holds. How you can create your own universe through a brush, a pencil, a camera, just about anything you can hold in your hands and mold. This image is taken from a larger body of work of her in her garden. My mother was raised in this garden, as were my sisters and I, and my Papa was laid to rest here. I set out to document her in the family oasis she created, recognizing it is a fleeting place as most things in life are, and one day it will be taken back by nature.

Sandra Chen Weinstein: Jumping Rope. Refuge in America

The children in Houston enjoying the break after school at ESL class for refugee community from war torn Africa. The images are taken from the series: Refuge in America. My continuing work on this photo essay documents moments in time through the ever changing American history.

Fengzhao Xu: Sunset in the room

Sunset in the room is an ongoing project that documents my footsteps following the elders in my family. This series comes from my fear that time is so ruthless and eventually going to take the lustre away from their eyes. And this fear drives me to start photographing this generation of my family member.

Fernando Zelaya: When I speak Spanish I sound just like my father

‘When I speak Spanish I sound just like my father’ is a body of work in which I document my family; thinking about familial bonds, inheritance and the process of aging. The work examines my relationship with my parents, how they’ve shaped me and molded me, and how that has affected my relationship as a role model to my younger brother.

CATEGORY WINNER

Samantha Sutcliffe: Sister laying in bed, from My Suburban Sprawl

CATEGORY WINNER

Samantha Sutcliffe: Sister laying in bed, from My Suburban Sprawl

My Suburban Sprawl is made up of photographs taken in and around my hometown of Morristown, New Jersey. The work is about what exists beneath the surface of things. It’s about drugs and failed family dinners. It’s about being a teenager and feeling boxed in and lying to your parents and finding freedom in the back seat of somebody’s Pontiac Grand Prize in a Burger King parking lot. It’s about getting older. The main themes are “isolation, alienation and dysfunction” This is where I was born and raised and I respect the place but it haunts me. My Suburban Sprawl is my attempt to do it justice.

FINALISTS

Sara Camporesi: Transience

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice, everything will pass and we will come back to drink coffee.
Every object that surrounds us can be something new and reveal something about us that we didn’t know existed yet, going beyond the boundaries of our common imagination. Photography is neither a lesson nor an exercise, but a shared experience in which it is not always necessary to be a photographer. It is an opportunity to.

Frank Hubner: Yearning

Evoking those summer afternoons.

Judi Iranyi: Mantel series

This image is part of a series of composite mantels that I created during this past year.

Lucy Andrea Zevallos Mayorga: Dine in

I capture certain moments that are presented to me in the day to day, collect them, and keep them for myself. The sensations are ephemeral and in a sense, the images remain, my notion of home are the spaces that I inhabit, and the habits that I create.

Senny Mau: Love Language

Growing up I struggled with my identity and never felt at home, I disliked being Chinese, and my family traditions. With no interests in my culture or my history, I wanted to fit in. I was embarrassed and I hated myself for being different. It wasn’t until recently that I realized my presence and safety was conditional.

I am indeed a Chinese American, this is my home. Love Language is a way to for me to celebrate my kin. I am unlearning my internalized racism and understanding the hardship that my family has faced leaving their home to live in a new land that never truly accepts them.

Christian Mushenko: The Rituals of Home – blended family

Having moved so many times over the years, I’ve become aware of the need to settle in, yet at the same time bring a bit of the past and ourselves to our new homes. In this process the little moments of joy we find and actions we repeat become like rituals, creating a code that builds a sense of belonging.

Rituals that make a house our home.

MAK Snyder: The Kitchen

Home has turned into both my oasis and my prison. Spending most of the past year here, my mind and body has found comfort within the walls and floors of this place. I want to leave and explore but once I am out, all I want is to return. I know exactly what to expect here. I know where the floor creeks. I know what time the dogs want to get up. I know when the neighbor does her daily walk. I feel the house will miss me and my toes on its cold tile floors when the moment comes that I leave. So I stay. Because at times I have to. And at others because I want to.

Kayden Strauss: Grandma’s House

My parents got divorced later than most, with the announcement happening halfway through my senior year of high school. By Halloween, my mom had moved back into her childhood home and my dad kept mine. Thanksgiving was a fight, with my parents arguing over who got me like the wishbone of a turkey. I chose my grandma, despite never feeling comfortable there while growing up. Upon my visit, I saw her home in a new light. My choice being my own gave me the breath of relief I never knew I needed and showed me that home is what I decide it to be.

CATEGORY WINNER

Heather C Markham: This cactus is my home

CATEGORY WINNER

Heather C Markham: This cactus is my home

This starling is making use of this hole in the cactus to create a home for its chicks, and is providing dinner.

FINALISTS

Kip Harris: Snapper under the Sabbathday Cabinet

Snapper sleeping in her favorite position under the Sabbathday Cabinet.

Audrey Jeane: Bottle Calf

Gilford is a young boy living on a rural cattle farm in Northern Minnesota. He is the youngest of seven kids in the Finney Family. His home is a 2000 acre farm where growing up involves hard work, homeschooling, being outdoors and dirty, and letting his imagination run wild. He isn’t a kid of the tech age. His parents ensure he is outdoors all day to enjoy the world, the farm, and the animals. It’s a life not lived by many kids in the United States today. It’s a life that makes one remember our imaginations should run wild, our feet should be dirty, and our hearts should be big.

Dean Snodgrass: Untitled

Lake Merritt, Oakland CA

CATEGORY WINNER

Teri Figliuzzi: Roadside Picks

CATEGORY WINNER

Teri Figliuzzi: Roadside Picks

My garden is an extension of my home, it welcomes me and accepts me. It feeds my soul with tranquility, peace and gives my eyes the gift of color and beauty beyond my imagination. It’s growth and rebirth give me the strength to to always try again and move forward. Working with botanicals from my garden has brought me much joy, and a deep appreciation for the fragility and perseverance of nature and its healing power. My intent is to produce work that brings focus to all stages of life, both tangible and ethereal.

FINALISTS

Franky Verdickt: TOTEM

The project of T O T E M examines the notion of living, living as the fundamental key experience that opens and unlocks other experiences. Living has to be thought as the making of a place. Man has indeed a relation to a place, living is the co-existence between man and reality and is the most fundamental of human existence, it creates a frame wherein all becomes possible. From that moment the totem is placed, the space is structured, one can leave and return, and can be at home in a human world.

Carol Horton: Quietude

This photo was taken at the swimming hole in Randolph NH on a cool fall day- it was just before they emptied the water out for winter!

Sarah Barker: Refugee Camp in my Neighborhood

The Refugee Camp in my Neighborhood was a temporary, simulated refugee camp situated in the grounds of the Auburn Centre for Community on Darug country in Sydney, Australia.

During Refugee Week tour guides, who were former refugees or asylum seekers, guided participants through the interactive exhibition. Throughout the tour participants discovered the stories and experiences of local Auburn residents as they experienced what it is like to flee your country and try to find safety.

Francesco Pace-Rizzi: Beyond the wall

“Walls breathe as men and women breathe. The houses breathe, they absorb the air […], the smell of those who live there, the screams, the tears, the laughter, the facial wrinkles, the gestures and looks of the old, the outbursts of anger and the impulses of joy, the aromas of food and memories, acid, the closed glass, confidences, intimacy […]. We breathe in things, houses, and houses inspire our words which, if it happens, become memory »

B.A. Van Sise: The Infinite Present

B.A. Van Sise, a photographic artist, maintains the unusual practice of making one, and only one, photograph every single day in an ongoing project called The Infinite Present. During the Lost Year of the pandemic, he took to the road crisscrossing the American continent making one photograph daily for four months; on the day he finally returned home to Queens, New York at the end of his journey, his one photograph for the day still unmade, this was the sight as he pulled up in front of his home again.

Emma Creighton Hopson: Wish You Were Here You Are

This project contributes to a contemporary representation of motherhood through constructed rephotography. The resulting open-ended visuals exist in a kind of in-between place that oscillates between the real and the unreal. Through its varied visuals, Wish You Were Here You Are considers the multiplicity of signification, contingency of meaning, and relationships between truth and illusion in every layered pictorial plane. The work provides a new, multilayered representation of motherhood as it simultaneously speaks to the role of photography today and broader themes of identity and time.

Michael Manning: In a Family Way

When I saw your call, Notions of Home, images began flooding my mind. These images are from an ongoing body of work, In a Family Way, images of my own family, my kids, friends and the children of friends. Home has always been a deeply emotional and complicated place for me. I am the child of extreme domestic violence, although that wasn’t my only experience of home it was fundamental. Those years impacted me in ways I would only uncover through my art, and through the experience of having a family of my own. Those years, early notions of home, drove my search for image, for meaning and beauty.

Po-Yi Li: Retiring in Paradise

Lanyu is located on the sea off the southeast of Taiwan. It is beautiful and has many private attractions. It can also be far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It is the place I dream of living and living after retirement.

Matteo Di Giovanni: The Suspended Door

Traumatic events always change the perception of the world as well as the perception of ourselves within a particular space. They set a “before” and “after”, which cannot be avoided.

In 2012, after 13 years, I was forced to go back to my homeland after an important road accident I had whilst working in the Balkans.

I never felt strong connections to that anonymous part of Italy.

This project, which is still ongoing, is based on a 9-year series of road-trips with the aim to question what Home means to me and on, the same level, whether or not the idea to have roots can enrich yourself.

Edward Gia: Untitled

This photograph to me represents myself navigating through heteronormative spaces as a queer person of color. The fact that it’s taken in a religious space gives it this sense of importance of finding ones self, just as the wilting flower allows the other to bloom and witness a new beginning.

CATEGORY WINNER

Anton Kuehnhackl: Reconfiguring a “Thing” Like You and Me

CATEGORY WINNER

Anton Kuehnhackl: Reconfiguring a “Thing” Like You and Me

These works were made at the start of the COVID19 pandemic, and reflect two things; One being the feeling of confusion and hectic-ness the virus brought, as well as hopelessness. The other being a slight glimmer of hope that despite everything going on, pushing through would lead to some result, a result.

It’s that endpoint or answer that I was keen on getting to, rather than focusing on the bleak present.

FINALISTS

Ting Ting Chen: Serenity in St. Vincent’s

I came to Newfoundland Canada 3 years ago from Asia as an international student. Through the years I have called Newfoundland my new home, and made my best friend here, Robert Tilley, a 73-year-old Newfoundlander. In this photo, Robert was standing on the edge of the sandy and curving shore of St. Vincent’s, facing the calm water. The calm water in Newfoundland always reminds me of the home where I was born and raised. I guess it is because there is a big river in my hometown, and both the river there and the water here sometimes share the serenity.

Joe Myers: I can’t reach it

This 8×10 print was drunkenly developed with D76 in my house darkroom with no clock. While this was due to limited resources and money, it also feels very representational of how life leaves you at its mercy. The isolation of the last year has been hard enough and I have lost a couple of friends on top of that. Even though the space in which I live and practice my art is my home, recent events have confused it all and my home doesn’t have the same comfort it once had.

Carrie Tomberlin: Home

This is an image I shot at my childhood home. It comes from a series entitled Temporal Accumulations that with personal memories while at the same time alluding to experiences shared by many including aging, mortality, morality, transience, disconnect, and home. Individual frames were deliberately overlapped in camera to depict visual memory as extremely vivid while at the same time confused and non-linear. The resulting images employ the notion of play, asking the viewer to create their own narrative in reaction to what they see.

Man Zhu: UnFrame: Relationship

UnFrame: Relationship is a body of photo-based works through which I explore my subconscious behavior by showing my relationships with people around me. I continue to consider these combinations along with my family, the environment I grew up in, the things I’ve experienced and the people I’ve loved. All of these things shape a person’s character and defines their relationships with others and subconscious perceptions of those relationships.

CATEGORY WINNER

Luis Manuel Diaz: Untitled (loveseat)

CATEGORY WINNER

Luis Manuel Diaz: Untitled (loveseat)

What is placed and what is placelessness? How does a home become a place of comfort, and discomfort in an immigrant family? The home has become a refuge from the outside world, a place where a wall of family photos tells a story of migration and generational history. Throughout, culturally specific objects such as religious icons, household products, and framed photographs fill the frame. This image gestures towards masculinity, caretaking, and familial history. Demonstrating the complex relationship between father and sons, between siblings, and between men.

FINALISTS

Greg Hatton: sister.sing

Seeing her laugh.
In that light.

This picture reminds me of the gatherings we would have at our home. Friends and family from all over Los Angeles, sometimes from all over the world depending on who’s in town.

The events were always filled with smiles, hugs, food, song and laughter. It was amazing. It’s more amazing that in this image it feels like a bygone era. Covid came and we haven’t gathered like this since. We will, of that I’m sure, but this image grabs me. It was captured on my Leica M6 and I still can’t believe the shot. An iconic image for all the right reasons.

Ray Koh: A Room with a View (Big Sur, CA)

A Room with a View (Big Sur, CA)

Prescott Moore Lassman: Black Goggles

My sister-in-law carrying her children during a family vacation in Cape Cod.

Ara Madzounian: Birds Nest

Until the early twentieth century, Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon was characterized by its small, scattered settlements, predominantly known for its agriculture and marshlands. After 1928, Armenian refugees who survived the Ottoman persecutions began migrating to the area, settling in compact quarters organized into regular gridiron patterns. Each quarter was populated by natives from a different village in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), resulting in Nor Marash, Nor Adana, and Nor Sis (nor means “new” in Armenian).

BH became a safe nest for thousands who were forced to create a home away from home.

Clara Mokri: Liquid Gold

I was raised in California by a family of Indonesian surfers. Salt water runs through our veins—our connection to the ocean is a big part of Indonesian culture. From an early age, my uncles taught me a respect for the natural world. The ocean is the only place in the world I feel both serenity and adrenaline. Regardless of its origin—a freshwater lake or a tropical coastline, water is so universal. My love for being in the water has allowed me to find home wherever I might be. This project is a celebration of that familiarity and universality; feeling at home, even when you’re nowhere near it.

Güzin Mut: Lockdown Self-Portrait

It’s a lockdown life for us, it’s a lockdown life for us. In (what feels like) an endless lockdown in Berlin, my life takes place mainly in two places: on my bed and on my cellphone.

Alain Schroeder: Kim City

Pyongyang, North Korea.

A young woman, wearing traditional clothing, snaps a selfie with her all-female group in front of the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Struggle monument on the left of the Mansudae Grand Monument with its 22-meter-high bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. The 50-meter-long tribute depicts over 200 statues of soldiers followed by a crowd of factory workers, farmers, etc.

Rashod Taylor: Little Black Boy

My work addresses themes of race, culture, family, and Legacy and these images are a kind of family album, filled with friends and family, birthdays, vacations, and everyday life. At the same time, these images tell you more than my family story; they’re a window onto the Black American experience. As I document my son I am interested in examining his childhood and the world he navigates. At the same time these images show my own unspoken anxiety and fragility as it pertains to the wellbeing of my son and fatherhood.

Peter Welch: Return

Taken on the Delaware Coast during the winter of 2020, this image reflects upon the challenges one faces when returning home after a long absence; and how the space in between can alter the way we see a place that was once close and familiar.

Zhe Zhuang: Her Hand As A Heart

Photographing my daughter is the longest thing I have ever insisted to do. As a father, watchingher grow-up, accompanying her learning of walk and talk, I am also on my way to be a qualified father. I tried my best to be a reliable father in front of my family, but the truth was that I felt nervous with this new role.

When I looked back these photos I took, I realized that they could tell the true relationships between me and my family.

I also like her little hand, when i take a shot, Her hand looks like a heart.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SUBMITTED

GRAND PRIZE / ONE WINNER
Winner will be the photograph with the highest score overall in any category. 

◦ Featured interview on the Lucie Foundation website
◦ Part of Lucie Foundation Online Exhibition for competition
◦ Cash prize $1,000
◦ B&H Gift Certificate $250
◦ 16×20″ print of the Award Winning Image from Digital Silver Imaging (printed and shipped worldwide)
◦ Pick of one (1) Lucie Honoree Poster (unsigned edition)

CATEGORY WINNERS / 5 WINNERS
Winners will be the highest score in the remaining categories. Categories remaining will depend on Grand Prize winner. 

◦ Part of Lucie Foundation Online Exhibition for competition
◦ Cash prize $250
◦ B&H Gift Certificate $100
◦ 16×20″ print of the Award Winning Image from Digital Silver Imaging (printed and shipped worldwide)
◦ Pick of one (1) Lucie Honoree poster (unsigned edition)

MEET THE JURY

Rebecca Morse is Curator in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Recent projects include Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge, Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld, and Larry Sultan: Here and Home. Upcoming projects include Objects of Desire: Photography and the Language of Advertising that examines the ways in which artists have mined the language of commercial photography for their own work.

Photo credit: ©Hannah Benet

Kris Graves
Artist and Publisher
Kris Graves Projects and Founder of Monolith Editions

Paris Chong
Gallery Manager and Curator of Leica Gallery Los Angeles

Miss Chong has eighteen years of experience in curating, managing, and promoting fine art galleries.

She has represented galleries and artists in events such as: Photo LA, Photo SF, Paris Photo, Paris Photo LA and The Palm Springs Photo Festival as well as representing Leica Gallery Los Angeles at Art Basel Miami and Photo Paris, France. She has reviewed portfolios for Farmani Gallery, Fresh Look and The Palm Springs Photo Festival.

Photo credit: ©Sean Black

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS