ALimestone Coast photographer has had her work recognised on a global scale.
Louise Agnew won second in the prestigious International Photography Awards (IPA) with her photograph titled ‘Alana + her big loves’ in the Special, Smartphone category.
Ms Agnew said the image, which depicts a mother and her two eldest children in the kitchen, shows the power of connection and motherhood through isolation.
“She is also a photographer … she moved from Geelong to Whistler in Canada within the last year or two,” she said.
“She moved over there and I guess it was quite isolating and she was not getting as much work as she was when she was in Australia because she had not established her clients.
“It was nice to celebrate motherhood for her and she was struggling with isolation and moving to a new country as well so just that contrast between motherhood and isolation.
“She said to me at one point having the isolation and her work dropping back kind of helped her to soak up more of that mothering time.
“I try to capture people authentically so that’s really important to me and my work.
“I like to try and find those moments that seem to represent the person genuinely and I think photography is a way of making contact with life.”
Ms Agnew took the featured photograph remotely by pairing phones, the internet and photography skills and techniques.
“You do it phone to phone, so it uses the camera on their phone and there’s an app that we both download and it’s a secure connection,” she said.
“I have access to the camera on the model’s phone but nothing else on their phone through the app and I can adjust all the settings. The photographs are then hanging around on their phone basically until they transfer across to my phone and then I download them and edit them from there.
“It just shows that anyone can take a beautiful photograph anywhere.”
The award-winning photograph will be published in the 2023 International Photography Awards book and could be exhibited in New York.
Ms Agnew also won an honourable mention in the People – Children category in the IPA with an image of her niece titled ‘Terrible Twos’ and made it to the Jury Top 5 Selection with a film photo of Byron Bay beachgoers titled ‘Byron Bums’.
The prestigious photographer earned an honourable mention in the Nyland Prize 2023 with her film image ‘Elation, is it?’ which shows her son on a swing in Byron Bay and has been shortlisted in three categories in the 2023 Australian Photography Awards.
