Dear Nostalgia

2ND PRIZE PHOTOGRAPH

Dear Nostalgia draws from the vivid colours of childhood. Those lush, green days of innocence and wonder. It is a meditation on memory, where moments once ordinary now glow with extraordinary clarity. The work is a bittersweet yearning for a time when life felt untainted, intimate, and endlessly vibrant, when curiosity was boundless and joy was unselfconscious. Yet, within this warmth lies the quiet ache of distance, the realization that such purity exists now only in fragments of recollection. In blending tenderness with longing, the piece becomes both a love letter to the past and a reminder of how memory shapes our present selves, colouring the way we see, feel, and hope.

I love how you’ve frozen the water here and used a wide-angle lens to emphasize the face.

JUDGE

In Dear Nostalgia, there is uniqueness in the way the shot was rendered, its suggestiveness…the child’s head that occupied most of the frame, with the water well captured, frozen in time… and creeping part on the face to the body.
This work depicts the aesthetics of a child enjoying every bit of the moment. The carefree nature of the child, and his open palm, brings to life, the essence of the ordinary things in the face of ambiguity. Despite other things in the background, the viewer’s focus is maintained on the face.

JUDGE

This is a standard exhibition work. The use of light and shade is successful. The composition and the ability to freeze a memorable stage in a child’s life is well put together.

JUDGE

Turning Tides

Turned Tides is about the essence of transformation and liberation, suspending a fleeting moment where gravity itself seems uncertain. The inverted world mirrors the inner turbulence that often precedes change. Like the ebb and flow of tides, the work reflects how life’s pivotal transitions carry us beyond familiar boundaries, urging us to surrender control and embrace the unknown. It is in this surrender that freedom emerges, where constraint dissolves into possibility, and where self-discovery finds its true horizon.

This photograph creates an illusion of a two-in-one photograph in the mind of the observer or viewer. The photograph can stand either way as an independent shot…in reversal. The thinking process of the photographer is top-notch…superb, to have arrived at such a timeless and stand-out shot. As a result of this, I have selected it as my third work.

JUDGE

Mirrored Realities

Mirrored Realities is about the fluid boundary between existence and illusion, motion and stillness. Through overlapping figures suspended in midair, the work captures the tension between freedom and entrapment, progress and repetition. It asks: are we truly moving forward, or are we caught in the reflection of our own gestures, endlessly replayed? The fragmented silhouettes suggest that identity itself is not singular but layered, refracted through memory, perception, and time. In this ambiguity, the photograph becomes a meditation on presence, on what is real, what is imagined, and what exists only as an echo within the self.