USA: THE FIRST M.I.L.K EXHIBITION OF PRIZE-WINNING PHOTOGRAPHS TAKES PLACE AT NEW YORK'S GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Record ID: 858705

  • Title: USA: THE FIRST M.I.L.K EXHIBITION OF PRIZE-WINNING PHOTOGRAPHS TAKES PLACE AT NEW YORK'S GRAND CENTRAL STATION
  • Date: 11th July 2001
  • Summary: PEOPLE LOOKING AT EXHIBITION
  • Embargoed: 26th July 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • City:
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment,Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVADVAMDU5RWMEUZBN37U8XN4P2Y
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: The first exhibition of prize-winning photographs has taken place at New York's Grand Central Station. Three hundred photos were picked from a pool of 40,000 submitted entries and the winners received prize money totalling $750,000, the largest amount ever presented for a photo contest.
    In a new exhibition at New York's Grand Central Station, the best of more than 40,000 photographs have been presented to the public for the first time. The M.I.L.K.
    competition drew work from 17,000 professional and amateur photographers from 164 countries, all vying to win three-quarters of a million dollars (U.S.) The photographic collection M.I.L.K. - Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kinship was inspired from a book from the 1950's called The Family of Man. Collection creator Geoff Blackwell came up with the idea when he saw the the book and decided to create a new collection of family-based pictures.
    He says the photos in the exhibition are a celebration of life during times of happiness and sadness. "All of them are in a context that are celebratory. There's been a funeral or so on, and it's the community sort of getting together and supporting each other. And, to me, that is worthy of celebration, you know that these relationships are the things that keep us together."
    Award-winning photographers submitted work to the show.
    Various Pulitzer Prize winners are among the final 300 photos.
    The judging panel picked winners in three categories: "LOVE" was won by Y. Nagasaki for his photo called "Couple in the Surf". King Pang Wong took the prize for the FRIENDSHIP category for his "Malaysian boys at play."
    But Les Slesnick, an amateur photographer from Orlando, took home the grand prize and won the FAMILY category for "Senor Contrero in His Home in Mexico." Slesnick says his subjects are simple, but send out a greater message. "Senor Contrero is what life and family is all about, which I think is what this project is all about. It's supposedly getting our values back to where they should be. " Slesnick won a prize of $100,000 (U.S.) Kim Phuc is the subject of a touching print in which she holds her one-year-old boy Tommy. Phuc is known world wide from a photo taken during the Vietnam war, when she was caught in a Napalm attack and severely burned. She says holding her son in this picture taken by Anne Bayin was the realisation of a dream come true. "That means, like, I hold my future, my hope, my love and that is, like, seems to me, that my dreams come true. Because, when I growing up with that scar on my back and my arms, I thought I never have a boyfriend, never got married, even I never have a baby. But that picture is really the dream come true for me."
    Grand Central is the first stop for the exhibit. After New York, the exhibition will travel around the world for the next few years. For those who can't make it to show, the creators have published the work in three volumes published in 20 countries. The the books are entitled "Family", "Love", and "Friendship".
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