The Winner of Magic of Cotton. Photograph/Senthil Kumaran
After a month of deliberation and an opportunity to view some fantastic photographs, we announced the winners of The Magic of Cotton Photography Contest. Here is a look at the best of them.
Spools of thread, multi-coloured curtains, traditional costumes, faded jeans, socks, bed linen, bales of vibrant fabrics, all have one element in common—they are all made from cotton. Cotton is an essential commodity, yet one that remains humble and often taken for granted. That is why Cotton Council International put forth ‘The Magic of Cotton Photography Contest’, to highlight the special meaning that cotton has for all of us! We received over 2000 entries from all over India, over which we spent days and days of deliberation. But the top three entries were unanimous, along with the eight honourable mentions. Here is a look at the very best of them.
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- I saw these cotton towels drying in a hotel in Kargil. The row of towels, the repeating shapes they created, and the structure of the hotel attracted me. Photograph/Subrata Bal, Banker, Rourkela, Orissa
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- I made this image in a rural village in the interiors of Madhya Pradesh. The tribal folks’ colourful cotton clothing inspired me to make this photograph. Devendra Sharma Teacher Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh
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- The overall graphical design, the colours and the texture of the cotton sarees and the contrasting colours is what compelled me to capture this frame. Photograph/Chandan Dey, Businessman, Kolkata, West Bengal
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- At my relative’s house, I saw this baby. He seemed wonderfully merry in his cotton paalna, or cradle. As he smiled, I managed to make this picture. Photograph/Sukanta Mondal, Railway employee, Hooghly, West Bengal
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- I shot this image at a saree mill in Jaipur. I loved the loud colours of the cotton saree, and I made this image because of the fascinating patterns. Photograph/Palak Chauhan, Student, Vadodara, Gujarat
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- This is a common scene in my house. A wonderful moment is shared between my wife and our daughter, as she plays on the cotton bedspread. Photograph/Manish Chauhan, Freelance photographer, Vadodara, Gujarat
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- The fluttering cotton towels in the hands of these kids, the cotton-like clouds above, and a very perfect spontaneous moment made for a wonderful frame. Photograph/Debabrata Nandi, Railway employee, Nadia, West Bengal
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- Photographed at the Rajbhavan, Dehradun, the beautiful pattern of cotton-like clouds that framed the proud Indian tricolour, again made of cotton. Photograph/Bhumesh Bharti, Freelance photographer, Dehradun, Uttarakhand
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- Winner of the third prize: What you see here is a scene from the Annakut festival at a place called Madanmohantala in Bagbazar, Kolkata. Women from all over arrive to recieve the prasad, or holy offering, in their outstretched, various-hued cotton sarees. Photograph/Avijit Roy, Photographer, Kolkata, West Bengal
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- Winner of the second prize: When I landed in Sikkim, I saw a lot of these Tibetan cotton prayer fl ags. When I learned about their signifi cance, I decided to make pictures of them. Photograph/Ujjwal Agarwal, Graphic Designer, Mumbai, Maharashtra
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- Winner of the first prize: This picture captures a woman working in a maufacturing unit in Tamil Nadu, producing medical cotton bandages. This is perhaps one of the most important uses of cotton. The framing, expression and the white texture all worked extremely well together. Photograph/Senthil Kumaran, Designer, Madurai, Tamil Nadu
1 comment
Aniruddha Ghosh says:
Mar 12, 2012
BP simply continues to overwhelm me issue after issue. At one time I had made a practice of cutting out the best pictures and articles, sorting and filing them in separate box files meticulously. This was till about a couple of years ago! You know how it is with space (or rather the lack of it)in a small apartment in Mumbai – and as my older copies of BP continued to grow, I soon started stacking them in ‘safe’ corners. My wife is quite patient ,,with my photography associated idiosyncrasies, but even for her this ‘BP stacking’ business was getting too much – hints started coming my way that without my knowledge parts of the dust covered stacks might vanish! Imagine how horrible that would be! Every issue is prepared and presented by you guys and gals with so much info, advise, ideas, history and – if I may say so – ‘wisdom’, that I simply can’t think of throwing out any single older issue of BP!
That is the reason why I had at one time suggested to Madhavan that in your website you think about having an archivel section – by clicking which and giving a year and month – a reader could fish out an article on a subject. Your current ‘column’ backtracking to about a year and a half is no doubt a big help, but I was thinking about a real ‘archive’ kind of a thing where every bit of content of an old issue could be maintained. Is such a thing at all possible or would it be too much of a memory space consuming exercise? How about putting them ‘up in the clouds’?
Pray give it a thought, meantime ‘Glory’ with a big G to all your guys and gals!!