Entry Title: " Paris Lady"
Name: Stephen Spiller, United States
Category: Non-Professional, Self-Portrait


Entry Description: This unposed image of a woman on a Paris street, is a visual metaphor referring to difficult, life changing, decisions I made recently. Painful aspects of my past are cropped from the full frame. The work represents my struggle. Go? Or stay? No halfway. I went, changing everything, risking everything. My text fleshes out the self-referential nature of the work.

I am Stephen Spiller, and I live in New York, NY. For many years I’ve been photographing people on city streets in, for example, Paris, Venice, Florence, New York, Los Angeles, and many other locations. Photography, for me, is an invaluable tool to explore the meaning and significance of "identity” and "self", the understanding of which is crucial to individual well-being. Who we are as individuals in large measure determines how we behave collectively as a society. Since 2004, my work has been exhibited in galleries in Buenos Aires, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other metropolitan locations, and in a variety of non-traditional, and traditional, venues, including Art Basel, Miami Beach. I have also been recognized in numerous international competitions, with my work being published most recently in: Photographer’s Forum, Best of Photography 2011, International Photography Awards Competition Book 2011 and Musee Magazine (March issue, 2012). srspiller@aol.com