The Brian Lehrer Show's 'Best Photo' Contest Winners For 2023
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2023
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every year, The Brian Lehrer Show asks you to submit the best photo you took that is sitting on your phone – and every year, you deliver with some truly impressive snaps!
This year, you submitted over 1,000 photos! Our partners at Photoville, along with a special guest judge, documentary photographer and writer Meryl Meisler, picked out their favorites (check out their 'Top 50' gallery), and then Brian and the team joined in to help select three winners to present their photos on the air.
Brian speaks with Meryl Meisler and Laura Roumanos, executive director and co-founder of Photoville, about the three winning photos, which you can see below. Plus, hear the winning photographers talk about their submissions.
Partner's Note: Photoville will be celebrating it's 13th festival this year with a city-wide celebration in June. Click here to learn more about the festival, as well as this non-profit and their education and public programs.
This Year's Winners:Alfield Reeves's "Grandma"
While visiting home (Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa) for my father surprise 60th birthday party I got to spend a lot of time with my family, including my grandmother. So while the family was in the kitchen hanging out and enjoying each others company I capture this candid of her just observing. (Alfield Reeves)
Deborah Seidman's Are you running away from home?
Chelsea, Manhattan NY: Taken in September on a side street of Manhattan. Begs the question of running away, homelessness, hoarding. Which one is this? (Deborah Seidman)
Karl Wagenführ's Death Defying Squirrel Out Our 12th Floor Window
Hackensack, NJ: One day there was a knock on our balcony door; being as we are on the top (12th) floor of our building, this was odd. Looked out to see a squirrel on our porch trying to get in. It had climbed up our building, balcony to balcony, and was now panicked because it couldn't go any higher, and didn't know how to get down. This photo was snapped as it attempted to climb up from our window to the roof, which it couldn't manage because of the metal flashing to prevent exactly this. I finally had to persuade our panicked guest (with a broom) to go to the corner of the building, where it finally turned around, and climbed down the brickwork all the way to the ground. (Karl Wagenführ)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Brian Lear on W.N.C. and now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lear on WNYC and now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lear Show's |
| 0:15.3 | Best Photo Sitting on your Phone Contest for 2023. Each year we invite you to |
| 0:20.7 | submit the best photo you took that is sitting on your phone. |
| 0:24.0 | This year for the first time ever since we've been doing this. We received over a thousand submissions. |
| 0:28.8 | And as we've done for the past few years, we have some bona fide experts to help us weed through them |
| 0:34.7 | and pick out their favorites. |
| 0:36.2 | And if you check our page at WNYC.org |
| 0:39.2 | slash Best Photo 2023, you can see, and we just tweeted it out as well, a link to our gallery to a |
| 0:47.4 | gallery of our judge's top 50. 50 photos submitted by our listeners. Check them out folks at WNYC.org |
| 0:54.6 | slash Best Photo 2023. And joining me now to talk about their favorite picks |
| 0:59.5 | from the set and how they were emblematic of 2023 are Merrill Meisler who has been |
| 1:06.3 | photographing the people and places of New York City since the 1970s and |
| 1:11.3 | Laura Romanes executive director and co-founder of Photoville, the New York-based |
| 1:17.0 | nonprofit that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of |
| 1:22.4 | photography for all. Merrill and Laura, welcome and And before we bring on each of our three winners, let's get to know a little bit more about each of you in your relationship to photography in the city. |
| 1:41.0 | Merrill, how would you describe in brief your sensibilities |
| 1:44.8 | and your artistic relationship with New York? |
| 1:49.3 | I'd say I'm one of those people |
| 1:51.8 | who fell in love with New York City as soon as I moved here. |
| 1:55.0 | And that love has never faded. |
| 1:59.0 | And I'm attracted by New York City's gorgeous light, |
| 2:06.4 | diverse people, the perkiness in life in the streets, |
... |
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