didnt win the big thing, the rest of the finalists were a mix of landscape, abstraction, people, and p/j. mostly dull, frankly, with a few standouts. the winner, eric fredine, took a picture that i have been trying and failing to take for years. of st benedicts school, one side brick the other side smooth concrete, white snow, white sky, the school a perfect gemoterical cube, nothing else in the composition, monolithic and brutal, and with a refusal to negiotate or soften the bleakness of the aesthetic, it was a brave photo and i was proud to lose to him