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. […] I believe that an increasingly sophisticated audience will begin searching out and paying respect to those collections whose coherent structures organize the medium’s imagery in diverse and meaningful ways. […] Photography collecting as a field is still at such an early stage in its development that in the late ’70s connoisseurship alone was deemed worthy of extensive media attention and considerable corporate/governmental patronage. Wagstaff’s cunning in getting sponsors to cover the promotional costs of a marketing enterprise clearly contrived to net him a small fortune raised no eyebrows I’m aware of, save my own. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |