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Visitor Information: The RPS Gallery and coffee shop will be closed on Saturday 7 December

Potato Family in the style of Viscountess Jocelyn
CREDIT: Alan Hodgson ASIS HonFRPS

Food for thought

Stuff to do and study for a social purpose

I have two "Photography of the Year" awards to share with you, both with a strong social purpose. I recommend both to you as worthy of your consideration as stuff to do and stuff to study.

The first of these is stuff to do - Potato Photographer of the Year, a fun competition with an important twist. Fun in that you can exercise those creative talents through photography of potatoes. Important in that it has a charitable object; to raise money for food banks.

So here is my preliminary attempt. I have been studying the work of Viscountess Jocelyn, an early RPS member. I set myself the task of interpreting the brief through her eyes, constrained by the social conventions to features scenes of indoor domesticity.

The second is stuff to study.

Every so often a photograph will stop me in my tracks. It may be that it is technically clever, representative of some memory or grabs you at an emotional level and shouts "YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT THIS". This happened to me big time when I saw the winning image of the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year.

I suggest you take some time to study this image, by Bangladeshi photographer KM Asad. It won Food Photographer of the Year, yet it features no food. Instead it features Rohingya refugee children queuing for food - it is the absence and need for food that for me is the focus here. Congratulations to both photographer  for producing this work and to the selectors for their choice.

I took some time to study this image. The variety of food containers and clothing; probably not through choice. The expressions of these displaced children as they wait to be fed.

The RPS is a Media Partner to this competition and the Asad image makes me proud of our support. RPS exists "to educate members of the public by increasing their knowledge and understanding of Photography". I see this work as congruent with this (and indeed any) charitable objective as it uses photography to increase knowledge and understanding for social purpose. Inspirational.