A photographic image is a transformation of reality; when selected with consciousness and an intention beyond the recording of surface, it is inevitably a remaking of an event into the photographer’s own image, and thus an assumption of godhead. […]
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Herman Emmet’s models, I know, are Agee-Evans and W. Eugene Smith, among others. This work emerges from that lineage, extends the thrust of those seminal efforts, and deserves to stand in their company. But it certainly is not of interest exclusively to those concerned with serious photography, who may well prove to be only a small segment of its audience. […] Errol Sawyer’s mosaic city, built out of dozens of metropolitan fragments from various locales, does not resolve as a bleak or grim vision of the human condition. It feels alive, reasonably congenial, never malevolent, even inviting — evoking not only the loneliness that can lurk within urban existence but also that sense of solitude, welcome for some, paradoxically enhanced by the proximity of millions of other souls. […] It is little short of scandalous that the Museum of Modern Art has never given a one-man show to a non-white photographer, for there are many at least as talented as some of those photographers the museum has chosen to show over the years. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |