Three BA (Hons) Photography students have been awarded the inaugural GOST Prize by a panel of judges. The prize was awarded by GOST Books, an independent visual arts and photography publisher with a mission of championing new artists and creative voices.
Jack Sproston, Georgia Dumbrill and Gabriela Szczypa were all recognised for GOST Books’ award, which celebrates London College of Communication (LCC) graduates who have created outstanding photobooks for their final project. It’s the latest in a series of collaborations between GOST Books and BA (Hons) Photography – allowing graduating students to introduce their work to the industry at large.
“As one of the leading independent publishers of photography and the visual arts in the UK, we are immensely proud of our connection with GOST Books, and the support they offer to our graduating students,” Sophy Rickett, Leader of BA (Hons) Photography's unit Live Brief, said.
“They publish on a wide range of themes, and support artists both emerging and established to explore and represent the world around us through an exciting and dynamic range of photographic methodologies – a perfect fit for a course such as ours which embraces and celebrates contemporary photographic practice in the widest sense.”
The winning photobooks featured a wide range of topics, exploring themes of grief, illness and post-truth narratives .
Georgia Dumbrill’s photobook Reliving was a photographic series documenting the last few months of her grandfather, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Jack Sproston created In Search of Norm Parker (and Subsequently the Orang Mawas), a photographic journey that tells the story of Norm Parker, a zoologist who disappeared while looking for an undiscovered species of great ape. As for Gabriela Szczypa, her project Remnantsfocused on her grandmother’s death and the difficult emotions that followed.
The prizes were presented to the three students by Justine Smith, a member of the GOST Prize selection panel, during Shows 2024, LCC’s yearly celebration of its next generation of creatives.
“During portfolio reviews GOST sought innovative, intelligent, inspiring and engaging projects that have been executed to a high standard,” Justine Smith said of the Prize. “GOST were impressed with the work shown.”
As part of this achievement, Jack, Georgia and Gabriela earned book vouchers and will have the chance to meet with Stuart Smith, Director of GOST, for editorial advice tailored to their specific projects.
After winning the GOST Prize, we spoke to Jack, Georgia and Gabriela to learn more about their journey through LCC, their creative practice and their future plans.
Jack: My creative practice spans between photography, writing and filmmaking. Through a romanticised (and often satirical) lens, I explore ideas of community, relationships and absurdity in my films and photographic works. I often find my work to be balanced in a space somewhere between fiction and reality, challenging established truths and offering alternative narratives to reflect on reality. I like to do so in ways more nuanced and emotionally engaging than traditional research methods.
Georgia: I try to capture the realities, experiences and moments from everyday life and the people around me.
Gabriela: My photography is focused on unseen and unspoken emotions, so I try to depict that elusiveness in my images. I adore moments when not everything is said explicitly, when there is space left for interpretation.
Jack: I got into photography by accident. I was studying philosophy at college in Stoke-on-Trent when I decided to switch to photography. I really owe it to my photography teacher Amber Banks-Brumby who got me excited about photography as a medium and introduced me to photographers whose works still inspire me. It was Amber who first suggested I start shooting film and making books; I think it was this physicality of the image that inspired me to pursue it.
Georgia: It happened quite randomly. I was using my dad’s own small digital Nikon camera whilst on a family holiday. When my dad bought a new camera, I ended up using the old one a lot more and from there I effectively taught myself. Photography can ultimately be very open and creative, which is what attracted me to start up as a hobby originally. I did not really think when I first started up that I would end up enjoying it so much that I would end up pursuing studying the subject at degree level. Especially at LCC!
Gabriela: When I was in primary school, my friends were spending time taking pictures together. It was a way for me to get to know them, and with time, it enabled me to meet interesting people who were attracted to photography as well.
Jack: Predominantly I saw it as an opportunity to move to London to build a network and develop my practise with access to the facilities at LCC. With the course being so broad, it has allowed me to work on a wide range of projects and films over 3 years with the equipment I needed to do so.
Georgia: LCC has to offer not only a vast number of utilities, creative spaces and technology, but also the incredible networking links to industry. I was keen to study at LCC to improve my skills, knowledge and career prospects.
Gabriela: In the beginning, I didn’t plan to study in the UK at all. A year before my application, my boyfriend convinced me to apply, as he had also planned to study in London. I also met someone who studied photography at LCC before and I got an excellent recommendation. Furthermore, this person graduated from LCC successfully with amazing opportunities, and I heard a lot about the facilities. I did some research and I was convinced!
Jack: The people I’ve met and the community which exists in and around the darkroom. It’s a space where you can develop projects and share work, or you can choose to spend the day with headphones on in the pitch black making prints. We’ve also had lots of opportunities to exhibit work alongside course mates in various galleries throughout the 3 years. We’ve had the chance to install and share work in Copeland and Staffordshire St. galleries in Peckham, as well as showing my latest project as an installation, book and film at LCC during the Degree Show.
Georgia: My favourite memories from my time at LCC must be the vast amount of people you meet whilst at university, along with just how creative and open the College allows you to be as an individual.
Gabriela: I have always liked spending time in the darkroom with a lot of people, chatting about our projects and sharing ideas. However, I will never forget the Degree Shows and all the excitement connected to it.
Jack: In Search of Norm Parker (and subsequently the Orang Mawas) is an extensive body of work, incorporating photography, film, AI, text and performance. It’s structured around a story that began in 1973 when the zoologist, Norm Parker, vanished whilst hunting for a cryptid great ape known as the Orang Mawas on the Malay Peninsula.
In January 2023, I bought a large selection of Parker’s work, filed haphazardly within a leather box. The collection contains letters, essays, photographs, books, and painstaking research compiled over the 4-year period before he disappeared. This material revealed a tension between Parker and the 'Scientific Institution'. His persistent battle to shed the label of 'pseudoscientist' created an obsession with obtaining 'undeniable empirical evidence' for the existence of the Mawas.
The following summer I set out to retrace Parker’s steps across the Malay Peninsula to find out what happened to him. The work takes the form of an installation, a film and a book, existing as standalone artefacts whilst working in conversation with each other.
Georgia: My winning project is an incredibly personal and raw project, to which my previous work has never been been so personal and intimate. The project is known as Reliving. It was created following my Grandad's recent diagnosis with Alzheimer's disease. Recognising the importance of memory, we revisited familiar locations together in the hope that it would trigger memories and make new ones. The project explores how his increasing loss of memory impacts his life, as well as the lives of those around him.
Gabriela: Remnants is a compilation of staged and documentary photography related to my grandma’s death. I revisited all the places connected to her to connect with my emotions and understand her emotions more deeply in the process. In this project, I speak about untold secrets and generational trauma, exploring the extent to which the past influences current generations.
Jack: I became interested in photography’s role as a medium for truth in an age where truth has become a point of debate. With the rapid rise of image-based AI technologies, the photograph is becoming more and more dangerous. I wanted to create a project which used fiction to ignite a critical response from the viewer, asking them to question what they accept as truth.
The process began with research into ‘fictioning’ as a method of artistic research before devising the painstaking story of Norm Parker, a zoologist whose story I validified with falsified documents and forged photographic evidence. This work became my ‘found archive’. The next step was to go on a real journey, retracing the steps of this elusive zoologist to give another layer of realism to the story, whilst bringing in a performative element.
Georgia: My inspiration behind this project was primarily my grandad. His diagnosis is fairly new and inevitably it’s had a significant impact on not only his own life, but his surrounding family’s as well.
Gabriela: The main inspiration for the project was finding my grandma’s letters where she talked about her life. It was a very personal and profound experience for me, so I wanted to express it through photography. It was my way of dealing with the grief of her passing. The final form of the project was a book and I enjoyed making it a lot, but I feel I could continue taking photos for this project.
Jack: It is an honour to receive acknowledgment for a project I have invested so much time and care into, especially to see it received in the way that I intended. I’d like to thank Justine at GOST for offering the award and for taking the time to engage with the books.
Georgia: It means a huge amount to receive this prize from GOST Books since this is the first time a project so close to my family’s and my own heart has been publicised to quite an audience. It was nerve-wracking allowing this project to be seen, but I am so glad and proud that my family’s story can help others and raise awareness. Alzheimer's disease is such a huge and worldwide problem that so many individuals can relate to my work, or at least know someone who can. Reliving provided an opportunity of healing and processing through creativity.
Gabriela: I am very excited about the prize as that was the first book I made. I enjoyed the process of making it and I hope I will be able to develop more projects soon. It is great to be noticed by GOST, as their books were an important part of my research.
Jack: I’m still figuring that out. The aim is to keep making work – with a focus on books and films – whilst submitting existing work into competitions. In Search of Norm Parker will be showing in its installation form again at the Photobook Café in Shoreditch in October in a show exploring fiction alongside Toby Marshall, Noah Kim and Bella Kemp.
Georgia: Next in my career, I am hoping to head into production and editing along with still shooting my own personal projects on the sidelines.
Gabriela: I would want to get more experience in the industry and keep developing my ideas and projects. I feel that with photography there is a lot you can say. The beauty of it is that anyone does it differently.
Jack: Use the facilities. Get inducted into as many of the spaces as possible in your first year so you can use them whenever you need. Get into the darkroom, Book Arts, the Digital Space and the 3D Workshop as much as possible. Show your work to as many people as you can.
Georgia: Generally, try to enjoy everything as much as you can, because it goes by so unbelievably quickly!
Gabriela: I would recommend taking lots of photos even when you don’t feel they are good enough, as after time they tend to find new meaning. When it comes to the College, consider what you want to develop through studying at LCC, as there are many possibilities and opportunities.
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