2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize Limited-Edition Print Series Aperture Foundation is excited to announce a new addition to the limited-edition photographs program. To encourage the collection of work by emerging artists, Aperture will offer special limited-edition prints by the winner and runners-up of the Aperture Portfolio Prize. The Prize competition takes place every summer and is judged by Aperture's editorial and curatorial staff. The purpose of the Prize is to identify trends in contemporary photography and specific artists whom we can help by bringing their work to a wider audience. In choosing the first-prize winner and runners-up, we are looking for work that is fresh and that hasn't been widely seen in major publications or exhibition venues. Aperture is pleased to offer our collectors work by these talented artists. Proceeds from the sales of these prints will benefit both the artists and Aperture Foundation. Artist's Statement "This body of work is a comment on censorship in Saudi Arabia and it's effects on visual communication. There are regions in Saudi Arabia where lines are still drawn across throats in photographs (figuratively cutting the head off.) Faces are blurred on billboards. Skirts and sleeves are crudely lengthened with black markers on women's outfits in magazines. Art, as everything else here, is governed by Islamic law. Figurative work is still considered by many to be sinful. There is a lack of consistency, and it changes from region to region, but overall, images are highly scrutinized and controlled. I began applying the language of the censors to personal photographs. I made line drawings, omitted faces and kept only the essentials. This preserved the anonymity of my subjects, which allowed me more freedom as it is still taboo to have one's portrait hanging in a gallery or someone else's home. When reduced to sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable. For me, they became autonomous, and I became interested in the minimal narratives they created. I've always been interested in how photography functions, and I try to undermine any documentary authority it may possess as a medium. For me, a photograph functions more like a memory, in that it's a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and impressionable. In etching these drawings back into film and printing them in an analogue darkroom, I attempt to point to the malleability of the medium, before even the advances and accessibility of digital manipulation. The result is a sketch (from a photo), drawn into a photograph of a sketchbook/envelope/index card etc. It becomes a highly coded and self-reflexive language. What interests me most however; is that the information omitted, creates an image of its own, as does censorship to our cultural landscape."—Jowhara AlSaud Jowhara AlSaud (b. 1978) holds a BA in film theory from Wellesley College and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. She recently had a two-person exhibition at Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, and a solo show at Schneider Gallery, Chicago. AlSaud splits her time between New York and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. To see more of her work, please visit her website.