Hilary@Home
The MCR Committee and College ran a photo competition for undergraduates, graduates, and staff this term to capture the collective experiences of Hilary at Home. There was a great response with over 100 images and videos submitted.
The judges, Professor Hannah Skoda, Dr Georgy Kantor and local photographer David O’Brien, commented:
‘We were presented with a beautiful collection of images in the Hilary@Home photo competition. It is clear that many took the opportunity to record their daily activities over lockdown, whether working hard at their desks, exploring the local countryside or volunteering as part of the pandemic relief. Such a varied array of imagery made the judging all that more difficult. From portraits to landscape, many images caught the eye for capturing moments of quiet contemplation or the true exuberance of being in the outdoors at dawn or sunset... and many, we saw, took some time to enjoy the fleeting winter snow! Huge congratulations to all the winners for such high quality images. The judges had a difficult task in shortlisting the winning images and choosing the overall winner.’
The winning images
can be seen in the gallery below. The overall winner was Rhianna Watt’s ‘A Room
with a View: the view from my room for thirty days of lockdown’. Rhianna
described her image as follows:
‘Every day of Hilary Term has felt like groundhog day: I work at the same desk in the same chair and look out of the same window. The only thing that does change each day is the view from that window. For thirty days of lockdown I took a picture of that view every day, and put them together in this collage.’
The judges commented:
‘A beautiful image by Rhianna Watt! This was the picture the judges kept returning to and each return visit was rewarded with something new to see, whether the tulips or work paraphernalia on the desk or the cloudscape outside. A seemingly mundane scene has been brought to life by Rhianna's use of a ‘mosaic/tiled’ effect in the image, giving the impression of the passing of time and suggesting movement in the clouds. There is so much to see here; it is a place the image viewer would want to spend time in, even just to stare out of that window and contemplate more 'normal' times. Given the disruption of lockdown, the image style's suggested 'fragmentation' really resonated with the judges who viewed this as a fitting winner of this Hilary@Home photo competition. Rhianna will also be presented with an A4 print of her winning image.’
Thank you to all who participated in the competition and to our judges.
David O’Brien’s work can be found on the web (https://www.filmpinholephotography.com/) and on Instagram (dobphoto, david_o_brien and filmpinholephotography).
