“To celebrate new ideas in photography, we are asking people to nominate up to five photographers who have demonstrated an openness to use new ideas in photography, who have taken chances with their photography and have shown an unwillingness to play it safe.”
That was the challenge that came to myself and other bloggers in an email from Colin Pantell and Joerg Colberg.

Sophia Wallace challenges our perceptions of gender by presenting us with the unexpected, and forcing us to examine our own preconceived notions of what is male and what is female. Her portraits force us, through choice of model, clothing and above all, poses, to rethink what traditional sex roles really mean.

With Modern Dandies, her models create their identity through choice of clothing, presenting themselves as strong, beautiful and unafraid. The men in On Beauty are asked to show a softness we usually associate with women, girls even. By unclenching their bodies and their faces, these men allow us to view their vunerability as their gift to us. And with this gift we are given permission to unclench our dogma about gender and allow people to chart their own course in the world.