2020-shortlisted
February 9, 2021

Rory King – Burnt Fingers, Broken Nose

Burnt Finger, Broken Nose is a visual chronicle illustrating the battles and tribulations of my own personal experience with acute mental and physical illness. Shot during a period of my…
2020-shortlisted
February 9, 2021

Nick Moir – Unprecedented

Coverage of the violent fires which raged through the NSW forests due to drought and cuts to firefighting services in the NPWS and RFS. i studied the meteorology of the…
2020-shortlisted
February 9, 2021

Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher Kidd – ‘Cycle’

Twelve Moons – is a photographic project celebrating the power, the unknown, the natural, the primal, the love, the life, and the analogue. The long-form documentary art series focuses on…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Melinda Boxsell – Farmlife

“And on the 8th day god looked down on his planned paradise and said ‘I need a caretaker’, so god made a farmer” Honest, hardworking, salt of the earth, tough,…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Claudia Caporn – Just East of Now

Rural Australia is dying. It once used to be a thriving, prosperous area, with millions of Australians choosing the freedom of the bush over the crowded, fast paced city life.…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Remi Chauvin – An Ocean Between the Waves

Zarzis, in Southern Tunisia, lies just over the border from Libya, the main jump-off point for migrants and refugees from Africa trying to make it to Europe. Here, the numbers…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Joshua Cowell – Paradise Lost

The circumstances around how the Red Zone came to be are so strange and bizarre that it reads like a science fiction drama. After the initial jubilation of winning a…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Sean Davey – The Longest Road

Early in the morning of New Years Eve 2019, a devastating bushfire tore through Cobargo, NSW and surrounding areas. The speed and ferocity of the fire however caught everyone off…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Franck Gazzola – The Capsule

Under The Pole is an innovative underwater exploration series of expeditions founded by Ghislain Bardout and Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout which started in 2010 with the first ever dives done under the…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Dion Georgopoulos – Australian Black Summer

Australian Black Summer is a series documenting one of the worst bushfire seasons Australia has ever seen during the period of late 2019 and on going into 2020. With millions…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Brian Hodges – Darkhan

The city of Darkhan (“blacksmith”) was built with extensive economic assistance from the Soviet Union in the 1960s. As its name implies, the city was originally conceived to be a…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Christopher Hopkins – Living In The Shadow: Hidden Children

Uganda has more than halved the number of child deaths in the past decade. Immunisation rates are increasing, and life expectancy is on the rise. Uganda was the first sub-Saharan…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Allen Koppe – Aftermath “A Burnt Landscape”

The Australian landscape has been a vehicle for story telling for thousands of years. Early indigenous artists would depict the landscape when telling stories of the Dreamtime. These stories represented…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Mikaela Martin & Rowena Meadows – I Found A Window In The Wall

Collaborators, Rowena Meadows and Mikaela Martin live in different hemispheres. After finding two matching 1970s bridesmaid dresses in a local op shop in Nyack, New York, Mikaela kept one and…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Jonathan May – Rear View Mirror

Ingo Hansen returns to the desert opal mining town where he grew up, struggling with his health and searching for answers. At a crossroads in his life, he seeks comfort…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Ben Mcnamara – Context. Pintubi Country.

This series was shot on Pintupi country in WA whilst camping with the traditional owners. Im honoured to be able to share the complex historical journey along with the personal…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Natalia Mroz – Marks of Devotion

Marks of Devotion is a series of images that explores Orthodox Christian practices in Ethiopia. Although the country is modernising rapidly, ancient traditions remain strong, particularly in the holy city…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Stuart Murphy – The Lakes

Lake Cathie on the NSW mid north coast is a lake that runs through a naturally irregular cycle that sees it connected and disconnected from the ocean. The neighbouring lake…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Cam Neville – Into The Fire

Into the Fire is a homage to the men and women pushed to the limits and beyond during our summers protracted Wildfire seasons. Year after year they get longer and…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Matthew Newton – Another Country

Another Country, Lutruwita / Tasmania, a heart-shaped island at the bottom of the world, redolent of history and myth. Will this wild and special island retain the free agency that…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Alexandra Nielsen – The Backpacker

An Intimate Look into the Life of a Backpacker in Far North Queensland, Australia. Every summer during the wet season in a town called Bloomfield, a small number of backpackers…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Jake Nowakowski – Neo Pride

Neo Pride is the culmination of four years documenting violent race rallies in Melbourne. The rise of far-right/anti-immigration groups in Melbourne began to proliferate in 2014 as anti-Islamic sentiment, and…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Tajette O’Halloran – In Australia

In Australia began as a self portrait series while on a road trip heading home to the Northern Rivers for Christmas. The series was originally titled Christmas time; Australia and…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Annette Ruzicka – One Last Look, Before You Go

It started in the summer of 2019. Almost every morning I jolt awake at 5am. The knowledge that fires are burning all over the country floods back into my consciousness.…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Lisa Sorgini – Behind Glass

Behind Glass is a portrait series documenting mothers and children experiencing isolation in their homes during a period of enforced social distancing, to control the transmission of COVID-19 in Australia.…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Nadia Stone – Blossom

Blossom: /ˈblɒs(ə)m/ (of a tree or plant) to produce flowers that develop into fruit. A precious stage of development: still my little girl and a teenager at the same time.…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Matthew Thorne – The Sand That Ate The Sea

The Sand That Ate The Sea is an intertextual work documenting the South Australian Opal mining town, Andamooka where part of my family live (and are Opal Miners). The project…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Darrian Traynor – These Scars Are More Than Skin Deep

The Great March of Return began in March 2018 in Gaza and was a response by the Palestinian people to Israels illegal settlements in the West Bank, the refusal of…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Abigail Varney – The Build Up

The term Build up refers to the transitional period between dry and wet seasons in Northern Australia. The coastal city of Darwin is the Capital of the Top End; the…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Matthew Venables – This is Our Box

In late March of this year, with the world going in to lockdown in the wake of the developing COVID-19 pandemic, all my employment ceased abruptly and I became the…
2020-shortlisted
February 10, 2021

Nicholas Walton-Healey – The Disassembly Line

The Disassembly Line is an extended, but as-yet unpublished photo-essay about the process enacted on the killing floor of a NSW abattoir. The challenge of this project was to produce,…