Michals embraced the theatrical frame and the directorial mode; for him the viewfinder is a proscenium, models are dramatis personae. Another benchmark of his work is its exploration of the forbidden. A third is his insistence on stretching the boundaries of what a photograph is allowed to be. A fourth is the profoundly sacral essence of his seemingly profane and deeply disturbing vision. […]
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Salgado combines what Fred Ritchin calls a “stately lyricism” with an alertness to the drama embedded in the everydayness of hardscrabble subsistence, marginal survival and imminent death. […] The contrast between the world outside the hospital, where the physically well cannot find relief from emotional pain, and the world inside the second of Julio Mitchel’s “Two Wards,” is the photographer’s major point. It emerges from neither of these two essays separately; it is created by their combination. […] For all its good intentions, “Harlem On My Mind” is so predictable and perfect a statement of the white-liberal attitude as to be a grotesquely funny self-parody. […] Collage/assemblage as a medium seems simple, but in practice is quite complex. Mr. Beard has mastered it on many levels, from the tactile and visual to the intellectual and intuitive. Everything in these works becomes integral to them, retaining its own flavor and texture while also blending with the other ingredients, as in a perfectly made stew. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |