The Texas Photographic Society’s quarterly Portfolio Competition with juror Chris Bennett features an Emerging and a Mid-Career Photographer every month. TPS defines an “Emerging Photographer” as a person who has not been featured in a solo gallery exhibition and defines a “Mid-Career Photographer” as a person who may have had a solo gallery exhibition, but is not represented by a commercial gallery.

The 2011 Portfolio Competition III winners are:

Emerging Photographers
Meg Birnbaum (Somerville MA), “Person/Persona”
“I became aware that for many of the people I’ve photographed, the experience of performing and exploring other personas became a positive act and solution towards coping with difficult and problematic personal situations . . .”

Don Norris (Hattiesburg, MS), “Not of Our Time: Ten Antebellum Meetinghouses”
“In my documentation, I wanted to make suitably formal photographs of these formal places of worship.”

Suzanne Hanson (Kingston, MA), “New Days/Old House”
“Life is transient but the house is durable.”

Mid-Career Photographers
David Johndrow (Austin, TX), “Terrestrials”
“The inspiration for this body of work came to me while working in my garden, where the most interesting things happen on a very small scale . . .”

Keith Prue (Boston, MA), “Magical Thicket”
“When I’m looking through the lens, alive to the anticipation and excitement of seeing anew, there is a mysterious convergence of my inner and outer worlds, and I’m drawn into a meditative state.”

Willson Cummer (Fayetteville, NY), “Sacred Paradox: The Onondago Lake Project”
“I hope that my images will cause viewers to contemplate our relationship to the natural world and consider our impact.”