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Santa Fe Prize for Photography

The Santa Fe Prize for Photography recognizes and rewards a gifted and committed photographer who has completed, or is near completion of, a meaningful body of work. This prize was initiated to bring new work to light, and photographers internationally are eligible. The award process is by nomination only; photographers may not apply independently. The award includes $5,000 and participation in Review Santa Fe; the cash award must be used to complete a body of work or to introduce a completed project to a larger audience.

The juror for the 2004 Santa Fe Prize was Roy Flukinger, Senior Curator of Photography and Film at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (juror's statement). Of the winning work, he writes, "Byron Wolfe avoids the pitfalls of creating a personal photographic diary because he is able to journey beyond the natural tendency to just make pieces of daily art. He understands the parameters of gain and loss that the human heart must undergo and seeks out the moments that circumscribe the goal of experiencing life to its fullest. In doing so he transcends the bare subject matter and finds the universal that we all strive to find in our daily observance of fulfilling the human equation called living."

Artist Statement: Byron Wolfe
Every day, between my 35th and 36th birthdays, I tried to make at least one completely new and compelling photograph. For creative and practical reasons (family, job, sleep) the pictures emerged from my daily activities. I used a digital camera and worked quickly, usually generating scores of potential photographs in a matter of minutes. Each night before going to bed, I chose a single image and often wrote an accompanying caption. The idea was to make pictures for a book that would form a flowing narrative about the landscape of personal experience –something attentive to family, place, perception, representation, creative process, humor, change, and time. I was compelled to make pictures about things in life that are rarely honored in photographs but should be; I wanted to make visible the poetry of the quotidian. While I worked, I was deeply conscious of you, my imaginary viewer, and regularly pictured myself tapping on your shoulder whispering “look at this” as I discreetly pointed to something in my own internal experience.

My reasons for photographing every day may not be immediately self-evident. Most still photographers work to distill their visual world down into images that act as emblems –discrete representations in time that stand for a bigger, more universal experience. That's one of photography’is greatest qualities, of course, but it establishes a reductive method of description that works directly against the meandering pace, flow, complexity, and general ambiguity of life. For years I've worked within this model of making pictures to form a collection of decisive moments – isolated glimpses of discovery and epiphany – but always ended up with a document that emphasized only that which is extraordinary. Moreover, it usually failed to address the powerful human experience of the passage of time on a scale beyond photography's typical fraction-of-a-second. These daily pictures are intended to build up discrete moments in a way that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts and to create an on-going narrative where the passage of time is a central theme. When the photographs from the year are considered as a whole, I believe that the meaning of each day is enriched because of its relationship to and dependence upon other days some monumental and some perfectly ordinary.

There are other reasons why I decided to photograph daily (a decision that took several years to make); I felt an overwhelming need to practice my craft on a regular basis, not just when the pressures of life permitted. I sought a way to generate new ideas and consider forms of representation outside the conventions of my field. I wanted to reinvent myself every day.

Byron Wolfe (www.byronwolfe.com)
February 2004
Chico, CA