We are happy to announce that East, the photo agency that juried the most recently closed #FotoRoomOPEN edition, has selected Damien Maloney as the winner of the Series category with his Lexicon project. Congrats Damien! We would also like to thank everyone else who participated in the Series category: we’ve seen lots of good work, and as always we’ll share some of our favorite submissions throughout the rest of this week. (Remember: you can now submit to our new and current #FotoRoomOPEN call, juried by New York based Rubber Factory gallery. Entering is free for FotoRoom members!).

As the Series winner, Damien will receive 3 months of free mentorship by East, which will include personalized guidance on how to progress his career as a commercial/editorial photographer, editing of his existing work, and professional advice on topics like promotion and pricing. With over 20 years of experience, East is a successful agency, with offices in London and New York, representing a range of fantastic photographers and creating terrific commissioned work for  top clients like AirBnB, British and American Vogue, Burberry, Google, i-D, The New York Times, Nike, Vanity Fair and Wallpaper* Magazine, so we’re sure Damien will get a lot of value out of their insights. As far as we are concerned, we would like to express our gratitude to East for creating this beautiful opportunity and for being so committed. Thank you so much guys!

About his Lexicon project, which is still ongoing, Damien says:

“Lexicon is an inventory-in-progress of landscapes, still life and near-portraits that look backwards to the landscape of my upbringing in the American Southwest. The title references the four years I spent in Arizona studying language and linguistics. I’m interested in the concept of language fluency and whether a visual language can be used with fluency. Embracing the photographic cliché that exists in photographing the American West, the goal of my camera here is not to represent an alien place appealingly but to comprehend that this is a place where I am from. One of the foundational concepts of linguistic study—most commonly called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—states that one’s native language determines categories in which the world is viewed. A duality here is also presented for political philosophy, where Texas and Arizona are states with longstanding conservative voting records—both went to Trump in the recent election—and my family is no exception. Lexicon is an attempt to make sense of these themes visually.“