Media and language theorists must be having the head-explodingly best time right now trying to make sense of the seismic shifts in how we communicate. I mean, remember? How, back in the day, we used to write long, reflective love letters with velvety dollops of forsooth and verily? Now we just Snapchat our head as a heart-drunk emoji. This isn’t a world/hell/handbasket grumble. For years I refused to even use the smiley emoticon in texts, convinced it was a toe on the slippery slope to mass howling philistinism, but then I learned how to send devil horns — it’s like the verily of texting! — and I was a convert. \m/
My point is that we’re all visual communicators now, whether it’s dropping a cat meme on Facebook or tossing an eggplant into a text message. And the great democratization of photography is another factor driving this change. The possible downside: A dystopian future in which we’ve devolved into mute, shambling morlocks spamming each other with GIFs. The upside: Everyone is a born photographer.
And our fifth annual photo issue is just brimming with eye-popping upside. This year, 374 photographers submitted 1.109 photos, and 29 judges from the community applied their eyeballs to the mountain of visual splendor to choose the best. The result — well, see for yourself on p. 50. They’re photos of mountains and bees, hikers and dancers, cars and casinos, but, for all the wheeling variety, they share in common a spirit of striving for a perspective and sensibility beyond the easy visual tropes that a photographically seductive place like Nevada invites. These days, anyone can take a serviceably awesome snap of, say, the morning sunbeams dancing on Calico Hills at Red Rock. But it takes a true photographer to find the fresh angle, to wait for just the right light. That’s what sets these photos apart; there’s a dose of ineffable quantum bonus mojo going on in every one. For our companion photo essay, “ Yes maybe no,” we conscripted Heather Protz and our own Brent Holmes to explore the tensions of city life — action and stasis, absence and presence, trust and suspicion. Like our contest’s finalists and winners, they contribute to a special issue that’s about more than pretty pictures. It’s an issue about courageously seeing, celebrating and investigating where we live with fresh eyes.
Ding ding ding ding!
