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Bright Young Things: Andrea Morales Wins TIME’s Next Generation Photography Contest

3 minute read

This fall, TIME invited student photographers dedicated to honing their craft—whether it be photojournalism, portraiture, still life, conceptual or fine art—to submit a portfolio of photos for review by our editors. All applicants had to be currently enrolled students or members of the class of 2011. After receiving hundreds of entries, the editors chose Andrea Morales as the winner of the inaugural competition.

Though they grew up on opposite sides of the country, Morales saw much of herself and her two younger sisters in the Glouster girls she photographed for Extracted Dreams, Implanted Realities, a series that examines the coming of age for young women in the southeast Ohio city. “It’s a project filled with daily things that happen when you’re growing up anywhere,” says the photographer. A Master’s candidate at the visual communication program at Ohio University, in Athens, Morales won the top prize of $2,500 and a portfolio review with the magazine’s photo editors.

Morales met many of the young women she photographed while roaming the streets in early 2009, and she has spent the majority of the last three years documenting them. The young women face poverty, drug abuse among family members and crime—all while attending class in Ohio’s poorest school district. As the project progressed, some of the girls’ parents began to see Morales as a mentor, which put the photographer in an unfamiliar situation. “It became this weird thing for a while because I come from a strict journalism background,” the photographer says. “But I totally care about these girls like crazy…I don’t know if I’m able to help them through my photographs. But I know I’m able to help them by being there for them.”

First runner up Christian Hansen, a senior at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, showcased a collection of personal work taken since 2006 from places ranging from California to Canada. “It’s mostly from going on road trips and traveling around,” he says. “I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about what I was trying to get or what I was trying to do. I just know what I like and I did it all based on feeling.”

Second runner up Brad Vest, also a Master’s candidate at the visual communication program at Ohio University, presented Adrift, a series that follows Travis Simmons’ struggles to stay off drugs and out of jail. Vest has captured the young father’s story since October 2009. “What drew me to his story was that it was always changing,” Vest says. “Initially I thought it would be a great story because it was a young guy who’d made some bad decisions early on, and was getting out, trying to start new. I thought it would be a great way to document the process of trying to start over.”

These three photographers’ work explored just a fraction of the subject matter covered in the entries TIME received during the contest call. And while not every entrant’s work could be displayed, the editors hope that this begins a dialogue with new talent that we hope to mentor over the next year.

Roxy stands still while her cousins spray her hair pink at a homecoming football game in Glouster, Ohio. There is a 13 year difference between her and her older sister, so the eagerness to fit in with the older girls is persistent. Andrea Morales
Lindsay, 6, plays with a dollhouse in her babysitter's backyard.Andrea Morales
Jameska,16, tosses chips into Sunday Creek from the middle of the old railroad bridge, where they hang out.Andrea Morales
Michael, 15, and Jameska dated for three days before breaking up. "He's the best guy I've ever dated," she said. Andrea Morales
Nikki, 15, offers her dog Miley a drag of her cigarette while laying in bed with her boyfriend Tim, 18, in the middle of the afternoon on a school day.Andrea Morales
Jameska's bedroom wall bears the mark of her childhood. She's since asked her mother for money to decorate her room with posters from the movie Twilight.Andrea Morales
It took three hours, two family members and an emergency trip to Dollar General for butterfly clips and hairspray before Jameska was satisfied with her hair for her junior prom.Andrea Morales
Jameska stands with her mother Tammie in April 2011. Andrea Morales
Nykki, 18, clings on to her boyfriend Brandon, 17, while wading around in the pool they snuck into at the Elks Lodge near Glouster. Three months into their relationship, Nykki got pregnant with Brandon's child. Their relationship has been turbulent, which echoes a lot about Nykki's childhood.Andrea Morales
Jameska tries to wrestle away when Alex, 19, overpowers her while play fighting on her back upstairs porch. Andrea Morales
Jameska poses with her mother, Tammy, little sister, Roxy and stepfather Terry before going to prom. Her grandmother and mother saved money months ahead of time to buy her dress from a department store in a bigger town about an hour's drive away.Andrea Morales
Nikki and Tim walk through the house that his family gave them. The house was coated in asbestos and mostly dilapidated. Before the renovations were complete, Nikki and Tim ended their two-year relationship and engagement.Andrea Morales
The Trimble High School prom had a casino theme. Glouster is in the Ohio's poorest school district. Andrea Morales
Roxy, 4, holds her baby doll at home.Andrea Morales
Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington, July 4, 2011. Noah Church, a nomadic painter and performance artist, wakes up and puts together a costume for the pinnacle day at the Rainbow Gathering in Washington State last summer. On this day, nobody speaks until a collective Om culminates in a wild celebration.Christian Hansen
Syracuse, New York, July 2, 2006. A young boy waits while his two friends argue during a pick-up game of football on a vacant lot near a housing project in Syracuse.Christian Hansen
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, December 16, 2009. I was in Canada helping a childhood friend find out about a life he would have lived if his parents were still alive. When he was two, his father killed his mother and then committed suicide. My friend has had a large scar on the top of his head for as long as he can remember. We think, maybe, someone tried to kill him too. We were in Cape Breton trying to find a summer home his biological parents shared with several friends when we stopped at the graveyard on the side of the road. My friend survived for eight days on his own in the house while both his parents lay lifeless somewhere inside. He spent a year in state custody on the border of Canada and the United States and was then sent to Kentucky to live with his aunt and uncle, who lived two doors down from me. A couple miles down the road from the graveyard, lost in a heavy blizzard, I wrecked my car in a town called Mabou, Nova Scotia, and we postponed the search.Christian Hansen
Long Island, New York, March 26, 2008. A thoroughbred racehorse is kept warm through the night by a heat lamp in her stall at the Belmont Park stables in Long Island. Christian Hansen
Lousiville, Kentucky, February 5, 2011 The youngest of my three sisters, Ingrid Hansen, 19, killing mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma last winter. When I took this photograph, horrible chemo poison was pumping through her body. She killed the cancer like a champ. It took her six months. She is now living in New York City, working two restaurant jobs and also assisting the artist Tom Sachs. Christian Hansen
Trona, California, October 31, 2010. Trona High School's football team is the only one in country that plays on a field made of dirt. Known as The Pit, the dirt football field is a source of pride for the small mining town in the California desert. Homecoming weekend is the town's most biggest event. Early in the morning on the day of the game, the women of the homecoming court lead a parade through town, riding on the hoods of cars. The parade ends at the ramshackle stadium that's home to the Trona High School Tornadoes. Before the game begins, the young women, still on the hoods of the cars, do one lap around the field and then take their seats front and center to watch their classmates play football in the dirt. When the mine in Trona changed ownership in the 1980s, a period of massive layoffs began and they have yet to end. As Trona's population plunged from more than 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today, so did its school enrollment. The junior varsity football team was eliminated for lack of bodies and the varsity team abandoned 11-man football for the 8-man game, many years ago. Every year there are more layoffs and the town gets smaller.Christian Hansen
Weeki Wachee, Florida, May 3, 2009. There's a theater in Florida where women, usually dressed like mermaids, use underwater hoses to breathe while they put on 40-minute long underwater performances in front of live audiences. The water is very cold and manatees come and go as they please. The mayor of Weeki Wachee is a former mermaid. She is one of nine people who make up the town's total population. Christian Hansen
In "ADRIFT," Vest documents the story of Travis Simmons, a man who lives with a constant negotiation between achieving personal redemption and succumbing to his past lifestyle. Travis Simmons watches over his two young daughters, Patience and Journey, as they play outside of his one-room camper. "I sat in that room for 28 days," Travis said about the county jail cell he stayed in after breaking probation for the first time after his original three-months. "I felt, goddamn, this [camper's] a mansion."Brad Vest
Travis sits in the back seat of his parents' car after being released on probation on May 24, 2011.Brad Vest
The extended Simmons family gathers outside of Shelia Simmons camper. Travis finds it easier to stay away from old influences while living alongside his mother Shelia. "She keeps an eye on me." Travis said. "Whether I like it or not, she's always there making sure that I don't screw this up."Brad Vest
Travis adjusts his home confinement ankle bracelet as his daughter Patience, 4, sleeps, and Journey, three months old, nurses her last bottle of formula before bed. Since being placed under home confinement by the West Virginia Division of Corrections, Travis has been tested by the friends and prescription drug abuse of his past, the influences that initially put him behind bars.Brad Vest
Journey reaches out towards the flames of a fire that Travis built to burn off the family's trash for the week.Brad Vest
Travis and Tiffany kiss in her Ford pickup truck outside of the McDonalds in Ripley, West Virginia, for the first time after he was released from a five-month stay in the Huttonsville State Correctional Facility. Travis was released on one-year probation.Brad Vest
Travis Simmons and his youngest daughter, Journey, stand at the banks of the Ohio River behind their camper.Brad Vest

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