It’s hard to scroll through the various social medias these days without encountering a photographer who can’t wait to tell us, with a perfectly balanced combination of breathless excitement and faux humility, that they have been nominated for, or have won, An Award.

“I am deeply humbled to brag about winning the award for best nature photograph taken in August 2023 on a DSLR with between 24 and 36 megapixels and a zoom lens with a zoom ratio of more than 3 but less than 8 from the local newspaper, which has a circulation second only to the New York Times, well almost, I mean everyone I know reads it”. That kind of stuff. (This then leads to them setting up their first Workshop or Seminar, or, if you’re really lucky, One-to-One Class, with an Award-Winning Photographer!)

Maybe it’s just me, but the various aspects of photography are satisfying enough in and of themselves. And recently, these “awards” are set up with so many categories that basically almost everyone who enters wins something. It’s like if the IOC decided to add five new medals (how about, I don’t know, copper, tin, plastic, recycled trash, and paper) so that nobody feels left out.

Added to this is the fact that, with the various generative AI programs out there (Midjourney, and so on), it’s getting harder and harder to tell what was taken with a camera and what was created with a prompt, which renders these “awards” of even less importance, something I thought wasn’t possible anyway.

So I guess I’m looking for counterarguments here: what possible purpose do these “awards” serve other than a) letting the people / organisation giving them out insinuate how magnanimous they are, and b) giving insecure and needy photographers a chance to announce to the world that they are now an Award Winning Photographer?