Echoes of Self

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Ton Schless, United States
• Date of Photograph
  2024-2025

Echoes of Self explores identity, memory, and belonging through self-portraits created with a 4×5-inch camera on hand-coated nineteenth-century glass dry plates. Entering the landscape as a participant rather than an observer, I allow the body to gradually dissolve into nature’s rhythms. The slow process and the intentionally introduced imperfections become metaphors for the fragility of memory and the unfinished nature of human experience, suggesting that purpose emerges through presence rather than certainty.