Brazilian photographer wins The Art of the City competition

It’s official: Creative Tourist announces the winner and runners-up of its first open photography competition, The Art of the City

When we launched our first open photography competition, The Art of the City, we hoped we might get a few hundred entries. As it turned out, the trickle of early entries turned into a flood, and by the time the competition closed we had over 1,200 images from photographers based all over the world (all submitted via our Flickr group).

Judging took place a few weeks ago. As you’d expect, it took some time. And a fair bit of coffee.

Some themes quickly emerged. Urban decay featured heavily: beautiful moments and glimmers of life captured amongst the post-industrial gloom. There was plenty of humour. Street photography was often punctuated by neon lights or kids making playgrounds of the city they call home. We discovered that many photographers have itchy fingers when it comes to post-production tools and techniques, and we found ourselves occasionally wanting to see a few shots where the images hadn’t been played with, the colours left alone rather than ramped up to unnaturally bright levels. But mostly we saw a bunch of snappers who love the cities they photograph, who elevate ordinary scenes of city life into something much more… meaningful.

And so we come to our winner. ‘STOP!’ (pictured above) by the Brazilian photographer Luciano Bernardes was a unanimous choice for first prize – an image that, for us, reminds us what street photography is all about.

Luciano, 32, developed an interest in photography seven years ago and went on to undertake a bachelors in photography. He currently runs a small business as a photo retoucher.  The winning image was one of several he submitted and was taken while working as a photography intern for an NGO in San Paulo. ‘To me this image represents my feeling of being on the street,’ he said. ‘Before the picture I liked to sit still watching the street, now I take the camera for a walk with me.’

This image, along with the three runners-up, Manchester at night, Red Hoardings and Art of Decay will all be included in a limited edition postcard set.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and to judges Christian Payne, the photography, video and social technology expert otherwise known as @documentally, and Paul Herrmann, director of the photography network Redeye. Thanks also to Imperial War Museum North and Visit Manchester.

Images (top to bottom): STOP! by Luciano Bernardes; Red Hoardings by Giuseppe Lambertino; The Art of Decay by Nick Board; Manchester by Willie Runte.

Possibly related to this:

1. Are you a Creative Tourist? Photo competition winner announced. Social media expert (and competition organiser) Katie Moffat unveils the winner of our summer holiday photo competition...
2. Short story competition. Rain never stops play. Put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard): Creative Tourist and Rainy City Stories launch their first joint short story...
3. And the winner is…Pavel Büchler wins Northern Art Prize. Manchester-based artist Pavel Büchler wins the Northern Art Prize, pipping three other Manchester artists at the post for the £16k...
4. Northern light. New art exhibition at City Inn. Kate Feld admires a new art exhibition that captures Manchester at its most luminous, and speaks to the Guardian's northern...
5. The Art of the City. Photo competition. Can you help capture the art of the city? We launch our first open photography competition today to find out...