People nominee

This year was a wet summer. Only 2 weeks of hot burning sun, over Christmas and New Year, conveniently. I was back in Sydney for just 2 months, fleeing the icy fog of Torino in winter. I had imagined 2 months of strong light, of skin tasting like the sea, of sheltering in shadows at midday and warm evenings. But the cold current followed me. Even with sun the sea was cold. The ocean, not the sea. Then one morning the beach disappeared. The day the fog came I went to the beach as usual, in the morning, to throw myself into the waves before coffee. It's better than coffee. But the sea was gone. So was the beach. There were only shadows. I ran home for my camera. The fog had cleared a little. Enough to see the expression of the surfers a few meters away.
Shot on 35mm Black and White. No editing in post.

Though primarily a filmmaker, graduating with a Masters from Bela Tarr's film.factory program, Jaay has constantly been drawn to photography, primarily street and documentary style shot on 35mm. Growing up in Hong Kong, studying in Sydney and having lived in Beijing, Sarajevo and now Italy, Jaay's ability to move between cultures and different fabrics of society has trained her eye to constantly 'see strange', and use the camera to question what we think know about the subjects and scene before us. While she is just beginning to put her photography into the world, her first feature film, 'Beijing Being', an attempt to capture the energy of the street life of Beijing, premiered in Montreal in 2015.