WINNERS

Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset

  • Photographer
    Zachary Begler, United States
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention

Stemming from reflections of my upbringing in Montana, my understanding of America and the West was not truthful. It was an idyllic story told about the past. Using large format photography, collage, and mixed media, I critically examine how ingrained violence and aggressive masculinity is in everything around us: the humor, the pain, the amount. The feeling of the sublime once celebrated now feels like hell. Not because our John Wayne heroes have run out of bullets, but because this is what is left of a landscape stolen, then sold, commodified, gentrified, and burned.