Photo contest winners featured in exhibition

The contest was sponsored by the Arts, Sciences and Engineering Diversity Fund and the Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures.

“Generations” © Melody Ko

Melody Ko, a staff photographer for University Relations, won the top prize for her image “Generations,” a photograph of her grandfather and cousin that she shot while an undergraduate at Brown University.

Second prize went to Kay Fok, A06, an economics major, for “Xiao Mei Mei,” and Eun Jung Shin, a senior international relations major, took third prize for “Zhouzhuang.” The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, also features photographs that received honorable mention in the contest.

In commentary on Ko’s winning photograph, Ikumi Kaminish, associate professor of art and art history, wrote, “The photograph captures a charming vignette of a seemingly ordinary domestic scene in Lexington, Mass.: In a game of catch, a little Chinese girl jumps in excitement as she catches the ball, while her grandfather, reflected in a large glass sliding door, smiles proudly. A family dog witnesses this moment from inside the house...Such a dynamic flow of two opposing forces suggests the ancient Chinese belief in the interactive energies of the yin and the yang.”

Said Ko, “When I took the picture, I was looking to illustrate the Chinese-American versus the Chinese immigrant American generations, their cultural past, cultural present and the blending of the two. It is significant that my cousin is in the foreground and my grandpa in the reflection because it is a metaphorical statement of time and generation.”