My Own Wilderness

Katerina Bodrunova

It's been quite a ride since announcing the call for work back in August for My Own Wilderness. It was the first time I attempted something like this on PHOTO/arts Magazine. Would I get any submissions? Would anyone care about the theme? Would I get nothing but cliche landscape shots? All of those concerns were unfounded and the response was truly amazing. Submissions came in from day one and continued steadily throughout the month of September. 150 photographers from all over the world submitted over 700 images.  Images that made it a joy to work on this project and a very difficult time narrowing down to an exhibition quantity. The result of my hundreds of hours of curation and editing time are on the video being released today. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did creating it. I am looking forward to editing the book which will be published in January 2012.


Choosing five winners out of the 45 selected photographers was even more difficult than choosing the images for the exhibit. Any of the 45 could have been one of the winners as far as I'm concerned. Every one of these selected photographers submitted very thoughtful and personal projects to this call for work. In the video you are only seeing one or two images from far broader series with deeper meanings than I can reveal within the confines of a group show.  It is well worth going to the individual photographer's websites and exploring the full body of their work.

The terms of the competition stated that five winning photographers would receive a free copy of the book when published. (All selected photographers will be able to buy the book at cost), so as difficult as it was to choose, those five photographers are...

Bernard Mindich           New York, USA

Agan Harahap               Jakarta, Indonesia

Irina Popova                  Russia

Andi Schreiber               New York, USA

Katerina Bodrunova      Russia

I will be posting some extended features on these five photographers in the coming weeks.

Here is a list of all photographers selected with links to their web sites

And here is the video of the exhibit.  It is just under 15 minutes long. Pour yourself a cup of tea and sit back and enjoy it. Would love to hear your feedback. Thanks again to all the amazing artists who had the courage to write some very personal and intense artist statements and submit incredibly emotional work.

My Own Wilderness on Vimeo