Introduction
Every photographer faces a set of moral and political choices about how to use their camera and how to represent the people they depict. No camera is a passive bystander, simply and passively recording some external reality; cameras have the point of view of their owners. Is the camera a weapon, reducing the powerful to mere mortality (like Richard Avedon) or making the familiar strange and grotesque (like Diane Arbus)?
The Winners for 2010
First prize, Emilie Dubois, graduate student at Boston College, for her photo and commentary entitled "Girl on the M4 bus" and her commentary on Rachel's photo entitled “Guatemalan peek-a-boo”.
The Winners for 2008
First prize, Haruna Miyagawa Fukui, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Department of Sociology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3701 USA, for her photo and commentary entitled "Bonsai in the Middle--Detachment and Incorporation" and her commentary on Rachel's photo entitled "Guatemalans boarding bus."
Award's conditions
The purpose of the Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize for Visual Sociology is to encourage students to incorporate visual analysis in their study and understanding of social phenomena. The contest is open to undergraduate and graduate students (majoring in any social science).
Rachel's Biography
Rachel Dorothy Tanur (1958-2002) was not trained as a social scientist, but she cared deeply about people and their lives and was an acute observer of living conditions and interactions. Her profound empathy for others and her commitment to helping those less fortunate than herself accompanied her on her travels and often guided her photography. She delighted in photographing the interaction of people and the artifacts they used and created in such engagements. These, of course, are the raw materials of social science and Rachel left us a rich legacy of such photos.
Gallery
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