The recipient of the Summershow Best in Show 2012 Award was announced late Friday 6 July at the opening night launch party at Foto8 Gallery. Congratulation to the awardees and to all our entrants and exhibitors in the Summershow this year, the range of subjects and styles of photography is truly impressive and inspirational.

And the Best in Show award of £2000 goes to…

Titus Simoens’ image from the series ‘Blue, See’. Simoens will receive his prize of £2000 for the award. Judges were intrigued by the composition of the image as well as its somewhat sinister edge.

“The photographer has managed to capture the vulnerability and the contrast between what is going on in the frame and what is happening outside of it.” – Phil Coomes

Honourable Mentions were awarded to ‘Freedom Seekers’ by Yusuke Harada, ‘Boxer #7’ by Luca Sage and ‘Notting Hill Carnival Stabbing’ by Oli Scarff. The three Honourable Mentions and the Best in Show were chosen from the 159 individual images that make up the Summershow exhibition this year.

About Titus Simoens
Titus Simoens is a photographer working in Belgium. The series ‘Blue, See’ is about the Ibis school in Ostend, Belgium, a boarding school for children with behavioural problems or unstable situations at home. The children are trained to become fisherman or mariners in an attempt to help them develop more discipline and structure in life. This series looks at the institutionalised lives of boys who share the same fate and thereby become family.

The 2012 Summershow Judges
Gerry Badger, Writer and Curator of Photography
Phil Coomes, Picture Editor, BBC Online
Alison Jackson, Photographer
Simon Roberts, Photographer
Ossian Ward, Art Critic, TimeOut London

About the Summershow
The Foto8 Summershow is London’s greatest photographic spectacle, a veritable ‘salon de photographie’ – an inspiring array of framed and mounted images of all shapes and sizes, installed from floor to ceiling. This year over 3200 individual images were entered into the Summershow open submission exhibition. It runs until 18 August 2012.

‘Freedom Seekers’ by Yusuke Harada

‘Boxer #7’ by Luca Sage

‘Notting Hill Carnival Stabbing’ by Oli Scarff