Photo by: Sarah Sperber
CJET successfully ran its inaugural Street Photographer of the Year competition in 2011. This exciting event won backing from Time Out magazine, Olympus, who donated the camcorder top prize and Guardian News & Media. Judges were award-winning photographer Eamonn McCabe, former Picture Editor of The Guardian, renowned publisher Dr Margaret Busby, a CJET trustee, Allyce Hibbert, Picture Editor of Time Out and Brian Usher, Picture Editor of The-Latest.Com. Entrants to the competition, a high proportion of whom were young people, took images with their mobile phones which told a unique story about their community and region. An exhibition of the competition photographs was held at the London College of Communication at Elephant and Castle, south east London, in March 2012. This allowed these visual narratives from the competition to be shared with a wide audience, many of whom had not seen an exhibition of this kind before. Among the visitor was a senior representative of Getty Images, the world’s largest stock photo agency.