The Brian Lehrer Show's 'Best Photo' Contest Winners For 2023

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lehrer Show's Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone Contest for 2023. Each year, we invite you to submit the best photo you took that is sitting on your phone. This year, for the first time ever since we've been doing this, we received over 1,000 submissions. As we've done for the past few years, we have some bona fide experts to help us weed through them and pick out their favorites. If you check our page at wnyc.org/bestphoto2023, you can see, and we just tweeted it out as well, a link to a gallery of our judges' top 50, 50 photos submitted by our listeners. Check them out, folks, at wnyc.org/bestphoto2023.

Joining me now to talk about their favorite pics from the set and how they were emblematic of 2023 are Meryl Meisler, who has been photographing the people and places of New York City since the 1970s, and Laura Roumanos, executive director and co-founder of Photoville, the New York-based nonprofit that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all. Meryl and Laura, welcome to WNYC.

Meryl Meisler: I'm delighted to be here. Thank you.

Laura Roumanos: Hey, Brian. Nice to see you.

Brian Lehrer: Before we bring on each of our three winners, let's get to know a little bit more about each of you and your relationship to photography in the city. Meryl, how would you describe in brief your sensibilities and your artistic relationship with New York?

Meryl Meisler: I'd say I'm one of those people who fell in love with New York City as soon as I moved here, and that love has never faded. I'm attracted by New York City's gorgeous light, the diverse people, the quirkiness in life in the streets and private spaces. It never fails to amaze me. It's a magic city.

Brian Lehrer: Laura, since you're the experts at Photoville, our partners in this the last few years, we usually leave it to you and your PhotoVille colleagues to select our guest judge. Tell us why you picked Meryl this year.

Laura Roumanos: Well, Meryl is-- I mean, if any of you have not seen her work, I would recommend going to her website, check her out, google her. She's incredible. We actually have been a fan of Meryl for years, but we were fortunate enough to work with her really closely a few years ago where she, believe it or not, was a-- she was an actual teacher at a New York City school in Brooklyn, and we had the absolute honor to showcase those photographs from years ago of the school back in the '80s and '70s, actually at the school itself in Brooklyn. The reason why we chose Meryl is because Meryl is one of those special people, she's a chameleon, whoever you are. She got the principal involved. The principal became like the honorary curator of the show. When we had to decide who would work with us this year, it was, without question, Meryl.

Meryl Meisler: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: A shout out, Laura, to you and your colleagues, Dave Shelley and Sam Barzilay from Photoville, for looking through over 1,000 submissions. You've seen a few years' worth of our best photo submissions, and of course, in 2020, we saw a lot of masks, a lot of empty streets, a lot of streets filled with George Floyd protesters, a lot of Zoom gatherings. What did you see in this year's photos that might suggest what kind of year 2023 has been?

Laura Roumanos: I think there was a lot of-- and actually, Meryl said that word, 'quirkiness.' I think a lot of us, a lot of folks out there are taking photos of just really quirky moments that they saw on the street, in their homes, there's a lot of things we'll see. Also, poignant moments, private moments. I think we take for granted that we can take photos of anything we see. You've had a pretty heavy show today, Brian, and I would be remiss if I didn't say that we shouldn't take for granted the fact that we have that freedom to take those photos. In parts around the world, we have journalists and photographers who are in danger, who are being killed because of it. I know, again, a lot of quirkiness, there's been a lot of heaviness in the world right now, and sometimes we do need some lightness, but we should always remember those who are putting themselves in the line of danger to report the visuals of the world.

Brian Lehrer: Okay, let's get to our three winners. Up first, a photo that was taken by Alfield Reeves. He joins us now. Alfield, welcome to the show, and congratulations.

Alfield Reeves: Hello, thank you. Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to ask Meryl, as the judge who picked your photo as one of the three winners, to describe it visually, rather than asking you, for our obviously not looking at it radio audience. Meryl?

Meryl Meisler: Well, thank you. It's vertical, it's black and white, and we see a woman of color, who I would say is an elder, sitting in an interior setting that seems to be somebody's home. I was struck by the exquisite light and darkness. It's a pensive moment. Her face, her hands are gently touching one another and the mouth. The fingers that are held together, they show that these fingers have worked really hard. The interior details, the patterns of her dress, to me would indicate-- seemed like they're from someplace further away. I read about it, that he's visiting his family in Africa, but I would know that by the patterns.

The kitchen has a modern wooden cabinet, tiling, pans and dishes, and your homemade curtains. There are ribbons tied on the curtains that seem to be placed there. These are the kind of ribbons-- it's one color, but it's dark. Here, I would think they might indicate ribbons that people wear about HIV or AIDS, or breast cancer. Are they decorative? I wonder what these ribbons signify. There are bars on the window, or what looks like a kitchen window, and--

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in just for time and tell our listeners, if I wasn't explicit about it before, besides the gallery of the 50 finalists, you can certainly see the three winners highlighted on our site at wnyc.org/bestphoto2023, if you want to go and look right now while we're talking about them. Alfield, tell us very briefly the story behind this photo, which I love, by the way, for the sheer visual shades of dark that drew my eye to really look at the subtle contrasts in almost every little detail in the shot, because there's so much that's personally evocative, but also artistically complex in sort of different shades of dark. What were you getting at in this photo?

Alfield Reeves: Yes, thank you. Yes. First, it's Alfield, just to correct you--

Brian Lehrer: Sorry.

Alfield Reeves: No, you're fine. Yes, so I'm originally from Liberia, West Africa, and I was home early this year to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday, and my mom was throwing a surprise birthday party for him. This was probably one of the days either after or before that celebration. My grandma was over at my parents' house, and family was there, cousins were there just in the kitchen playing around. I just captured her observing that experience, observing her grandkids, observing family in the kitchen enjoying themselves. It was just kind of a moment of her taking everything in, and I just was able to get her, observing her observing those things.

Brian Lehrer: Very nice. Beautiful. Thank you very much-

Alfield Reeves: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: -and congratulations again. We're going to go on to our next winner, who is Deborah Seidman, and the photo here is called Loaded Car. Can I turn to you, Laura, to very briefly describe this loaded car? It's hilarious, actually, right? This is a found object, I guess, a car with-- it's almost like from a cartoon or an old movie with everything the family owns piled onto the car. Why did you pick it?

Laura Roumanos: I think it's-- Talking about quirky, it's those moments you're walking from A to B in New York City, and you come across something. Actually, I think Deborah can talk more about what she was thinking when she took the photo, but when we were looking at it, it's like, "Hang on, this is funny." But then you're like, "Hang on, is this someone who's actually running away? Is this serious? Are they moving? Is this the most--" As we all know, in New York City, it's expensive to move. There's just so many questions that come from it. It's just a really great photo, and I love that red bucket that's just there.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Yes. Deborah, hi, and congratulations. I took it as a staged photo, because nobody could ever actually load up a car, and things spilling out of the car and on top of the car with so much stuff in that way, but do you know what it actually was?

Deborah Seidman: If this is an artist's piece, I'd love to know, let us know. I originally called it Running Away From Home? just as a joke. Then as I took it, it was fascinating. It's a couple of blocks from where I live. I have been taking street shots since the '70s as well, and it's kind of my thing. It's like it's my visual journal. It was just there. I'm walking the dog and it was like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I have to take a picture of this." I don't see astonishment in New York like this that often, so it was just-- It was funny, and it was delightful, because it was so-- Talking about excess, there it is, but on the other hand, I'm like, "Well, is this a hoarder who lives in their car, or is this someone who is having to leave?" It sort of had a darker underneath, but it was hilarious in the beginning.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I did think it was like an art installation of some kind, maybe a moving art installation. Although I don't know if that car would actually be drivable, Deborah.

Deborah Seidman: Well, it was-- I looked again a few hours later, and it was gone, so I guess so.

Brian Lehrer: Oh--

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Who's laughing there?

Deborah Seidman: Catch it while you can. [chuckles]

Meryl Meisler: I'm laughing, and I love how even when you spoke about your photograph, you were giggling. It just makes you laugh. That isn't an art installation?

Deborah Seidman: [chuckles]

Meryl Meisler: Good. Okay, fine. Everything about it works.

Deborah Seidman: Exactly, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Well, congratulations. It's hilarious, it's visually evocative. You could look at the various things and wonder, as Laura I think you were indicating, what's the story behind that thing that's attached to the car, and that thing? Deborah Seidman, congrats--

Deborah Seidman: The dashboard was pretty junky too. [laughs] As I walked around, it was like it was-- Inside and outside, it was complete.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah Seidman, thank you very much. Let's go on to our third and final winner of The Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone Contest 2023. See them all, including the three winners, at wnyc.org/bestphoto2023. Karl Wagenführ who took a photo of a squirrel that I'm going to let you, Karl, if you can give it a shot. A squirrel in a position that I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel in, in terms of what it was able to do to contort its body or where it was. Hello, and congratulations.

Karl Wagenführ: Hello. Thank you very much. Yes, a very desperate squirrel hanging onto our window on the 12th floor, looking out over New York. He is scrambling desperately trying to get purchase, and he has a kind of wild look on his eye, which was just pure happenstance. You take the picture and you just manage to get it at just the right time.

Brian Lehrer: The squirrel was pretty much vertical. You might see that on a tree trunk where you know they could latch on, but this was-- Is this an apartment window?

Karl Wagenführ: Yes, this is an apartment window, and he's just hanging over. There is a sill, so he was standing on the sill normally before, but he's desperately trying to get up higher. He went to the halfway [unintelligible 00:13:48] trying to find purchase, but he's not finding it, so he went back down to the sill and was on our porch for a while, and then he was climbing the brickwork. I shooed him away with a broom towards the corner of the building on the brickwork where he finally turned around, and I watched him climb all the way down 12 stories to the ground where he was safe.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. The other thing about seeing the squirrel in this way-- and I'll tell the listeners, there are actually two squirrel shots in this top 50. The other one, which is also hilarious because of the look on people's faces as they were observing the squirrel, was at Yankee Stadium. But in this case, I've never seen a squirrel contort its body that much. It was so stretched out in order to try to latch onto something without falling from where I guess two of its feet were and the other two were trying to get to.

Karl Wagenführ: Right. Yes, he's scrambling with his bottom feet trying to find something. I think there was a screen on there, so he probably had-- his claws were able to grab onto the screen a little bit of purchase, but it's not very good.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Meryl, two of the three that you wound up picking were these found things in the world, the car and the squirrel. In the era of the cell phone when everybody is a photographer, if we act fast enough when we come upon things, or of course, for a lot of posed things too with our loved ones, whatever, is-- I don't know, are we in a certain era of found visuals that turn into photographs and turn people into photographers? Or in a way, is it too easy to call yourself a photographer when you just stumble upon something?

Meryl Meisler: I think it's really hard to take a great image, no matter what you do. You know the saying, the best photo camera is what you have on you? I'd say this squirrel image, what struck me is that it looks like something that only could be taken by someone with a phone, because it had to be so quick out of the pocket, unless you have a rangefinder and the point of view. But then again, the way you framed it, you don't see that there's brick anywhere else. To me, it could be a totally glass skyscraper, and the photographer and the squirrel are equally shocked. And yet Deborah's car, even though it's an object, everything about the image is very well composed. The color scheme, the palette, it all works together, so there's thinking, there's a lot of instinct, and so I'm not surprised to hear that [unintelligible 00:16:30].

Brian Lehrer: Yes. That's great. We have 30 seconds left. Laura, tell everybody about Photoville's upcoming-- Do I see summer festival, but it's winter?

Laura Roumanos: Summer. For those of you, we have our big festival that happens in New York City, June 1st next year. We have an open call, so if you have a story to tell, it is open for anyone who wants to submit their work for exhibitions. This year alone, we had 85 exhibitions throughout all five boroughs. We have our hub in Brooklyn Bridge Park under the bridge. We like to tell stories, and we tell stories from all over the world. I just want to say, Alfield Reeves, I never knew Alfield's work-- sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong-- and I'm like, "Wow," and I went to your website and I started having a look. For all the 1,000 photographers and people who sent us photos, everyone's work, just keep photographing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Thanks to the two of you for judging. Everybody, check out Photoville, and thanks for your submissions to The Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone.

 

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