Brian: All right. Time for a little fun. After the break, we are going to look at and talk to some of the winners of-- some of the people who submitted the winning photographs to our annual Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone end-of-year contest, the 2020 edition. Listeners, if you're in a position to do so, go to our website, go to wnyc.org and click on Brian Lehrer Show. You will see a little collection of winning photographs submitted by Brian Lehrer Show listeners, amazing photographs that people just had sitting on their phones and submitted for us all to look at around the end of the year.

We have a couple of photographers coming on who are the judges in this year's Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone contest. Go to wnyc.org if you want to follow along and see these images, click on Brian Lehrer Show.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and yes, now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lehrer Show's Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone contest for 2020. Each December a little before New Year's, we invite you to submit the best photo you took that year that is sitting on your phone, and this year we received over 700 submissions, many of which were especially poignant between the pandemic, the racial justice movement, and other big things that happened in 2020. How about the challenge to our democracy? Our professional judges help pick out eight of the best.

These winners will also be part of that larger project we were doing at the end of the year, the Time Capsule that we were making to remember the very strange difficult pandemic year of 2020. That Time Capsule will be reopened in the year 2030. Joining me now to talk about their picks are Laura Roumanos, executive director and co-founder of Photoville, a free outdoor photo festival, and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, documentary and portrait photographer, and frequent contributor to The New York Times.

Laura and Laylah, thanks so much for doing this with us and for us. You looked through so many photographs, hundreds of photographs and you picked eight.

Laura Roumanos: Hi.

Brian: Hi.

Laura: Good morning.

Laylah Amatullah: Good morning.

Brian: Listeners, again, you can follow along with our conversation and view our judges' picks. If you have access to our website right now, you can go to wnyc.org and click on Brian Lehrer Show and you'll be able to see these winning photos and we will do our best to describe some of the visuals on the radio. Before we get to our winners, let's find out a little bit more about our guest judges. Laura, Photoville is a festival but it's also a year-round initiative, I know to amplify the works of photographers. Can you talk a little bit about what Photoville does during normal times, and how your organization has been adapting to the pandemic?

Laura: Sure. We are a nonprofit. Our headquarters are based here in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and this is our 10th year actually. For the last 10 years, we have been exhibiting photography and visual stories in public spaces. One of the marquee events that we do is our Photoville Festival. Usually, before 2020 we were in shipping container village under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Bridge Park and year-round, we also have a very robust education program. Not only do we work with middle and high school students, but we really try and support arts educators through professional development and different resources.

Then we also exhibit public art in other areas, not only in New York City but across the country. We're in Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Sarasota. We're also up in Canada. We're very much about making visual storytelling accessible for the masses. When COVID hit last year, I don't want to say pivot but we are evolving. We realized people didn't want to be in shipping containers. We actually had our festival in September of last year, not only in Brooklyn Bridge Park but in all five boroughs of New York City.

We had 63 exhibitions that showcased work from over 200 photographers, not only in Brooklyn, but we were in Times Square. We worked with NYC parks, up in Harlem, in the Bronx, in Staten Island, Queens. Actually one of the exhibitions and one of the artists we worked with was with Laylah, and her incredible work documenting not only folks, working through the pandemic, but also the social uprising with Black Lives Matter. Laylah is an exceptional visual storyteller and I'm so happy to have her here.

Brian: Laylah, I see your documentary and portrait photographer, which strike me without really knowing your work as opposite kinds of photography, documentary being news photography, and portrait photography being, "Let's take a face shot of an individual." How do you see those two aspects of your work?

Laylah: First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I'm really excited to be here. I'm in conversation with you and with Laura, an incredible community organizer has done so much for the photography community around the world, really. I believe that documentary photography and portraiture go hand in hand as a vehicle of storytelling. For sure, I believe that portraiture zooms in on an individual and highlights that person's specific story, which functions in the larger functionality of storytelling. I believe that they go hand in hand. They do document the time, in different ways, but they do lend a hand to the aspect of storytelling.

Brian: I'll just mention that earlier this year, or I should say, in 2020, you were profiled in Vogue for your work capturing New York City's most creative masks and face coverings. You want to talk just a little bit about that project and the challenges that you face as a portrait photographer during a pandemic when so many people's faces are covered?

Laylah: Yes. I thought that was really interesting. As soon as New York City shut down, I was out. I went out immediately because I was really curious to see how our city would respond to the shutdown and to the coronavirus in that we being the epicenter of it at that time. What I was doing, I would go out, I was engaging people in a social distance, manner, of course, and make portraits and speak to people about how they were feeling and what their thoughts were, and how they were dealing with all of this.

A lot of people had masks on, obviously, and I would share this work on my Instagram. Vogue contacted me because they noticed what I was doing, in terms of portraiture. They were interested in how people were being creative at the time because at first, there was only the surgical mask available but as a little bit time went by resources became available, people became creative and started to make light of the situation and really personalize how they were going to protect themselves and protect other people.

Brian: That is amazing. Let's get to our winners. Up first is one of your picks, Laura. You picked a photo by listener Juan Giraldo, the photographer who shot the image on a site called Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York. Just to describe it a little bit, for people not looking at it, it's a picture of a street that has the setting sun emanating out from behind some trees, making them look like they're glowing from behind. That barely does it justice, but it's the best I can do in words right now and it's a gorgeous image. We have the photographer, Juan Giraldo joining us now. Juan, thank you for submitting to Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone for 2020 for the Brian Lehrer Show. Hi, there.

Juan Giraldo: Hi, Brian. Big fan. My pleasure. Actually, I made that picture after being [unintelligible 00:08:55] train and being stopped for a while. The sun hadn't really set. Actually, the light that's coming behind that tree was just some fortuitous thing where I think somebody with their headlight on their bike or something like that. That was the result of just being lucky and being ready. Using my training as a photographer, came in handy in that moment.

Brian: Laura, you want to tell Juan why you picked his shot?

Laura: When you first look at it, it's a beautiful, gorgeous shot. The way that I judge all of these photos and it was also not just myself but my co-founder Dave Shelley at Photoville we were going through everything. What struck us was it's such a New York moment. Especially any of us who've been in public transport in the last 10 months have found there's been so many delays, so many stops even before the pandemic and so you made lemonade out of lemons. Not only just the image but behind it, the fact that you said, "Look, if I wasn't delayed, I wouldn't have got this great shot." I feel like sometimes we all have to take those moments. Yes, gorgeous shot, but I also love the story, the little story behind it.

Juan: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Brian: Juan, thank you very much. Juan Giraldo, is there a place where people can see your work in general, since it seems like you do this?

Juan: Yes. My website is juancgiraldo.com. Last name is spelled G-I-R-A-L-D-O.

Brian: Thank you and congratulations on being a winner of the Brian Lehrer Show's Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone in 2020 contest. Laylah, one of your picks, I see comes from photographer Geralyn Shukwit, if I'm saying that name right, called "7pm Cheer". According to the caption, it was taken on May 7th, outside of Brooklyn Hospital. In the photo, just to describe this one a little bit, a woman is leaving the hospital in a wheelchair and it looks like maybe more than 10 people covered head to toe in PPE, are cheering for her. We have a photographer of that one. Geralyn Shukwit, joining us now. Hi Geralyn.

Geralyn Shukwit: Hi Brian. Hi Laura. Hi Laylah.

Brian: Congratulations on submitting a winning photo. Laylah, you want to tell Geralyn why you pick this one?

Laylah: I really love this photograph, Geralyn. It truly embodies the way New Yorkers uplifted and incorporated the spirit of, "we are all in this together". It was a really dark time last spring when the death tolls were rising, but people really utilized that spirit of generosity and cheer and positivity and was dedicated to that every day at seven o'clock. I love this photograph where this woman is leaving the hospital, she's leaving alive and hopefully progressing in a healthy way, and everyone is on board with that, like, "Yes, we're doing this. We want to survive. We are going to keep doing this." I think that was a beautiful recording of that moment.

Brian: Geralyn, you want to talk about the shot and how it came about?

Geralyn: Well, it was one of those things that I started joining everybody at the hospital for the 7:00 PM cheer and this night was like no other. There was more people there than I remember ever being there, but then when this woman rolls out and all the nurses surrounded her and everybody started cheering. There was fire department there, the police department was there and all the sirens were going off. I wish I would've recorded video because it was overwhelming and just tears were running down everyone's faces because we felt like she survived and whether she had COVID or not, I don't know, but it didn't matter at that moment. [chuckles]

Brian: Maybe I can do this even a little bit more justice by reading the full caption where it says, "This was taken May 7th outside of Brooklyn Hospital for the uplifting 7:00 PM cheer to support the first responders. This woman was leaving the hospital and everyone exploded in happiness to support her. Absolute joy from hospital staff and the community. I'm trying to remember the good of 2020 and this is one highlight, cheers." Geralyn, that's a wonderful way to caption that photo. Does this fit into the context of a larger body of work of yours?

Geralyn: Not really. I'm a photographer, but most of my work has been in Brazil the last nine years. It's been hard to be a photographer in New York. I really switched to using my iPhone and wandering the city and trying to find fun and interesting things I hadn't noticed all these years.

Brian: You did a great job with that one. Thank you very, very much. Let's go on to another of the winning photos. Next up is another one of your picks Laura, and this comes from Jen Wineman who shot Parenting in a Pandemic. This one is unique because it's a selfie. Do you want to describe it a little bit for us instead of me and why you picked it? Can you do that?

Laura: Sure, absolutely. Just full disclosure, I am a mother of a five-year-old. When I saw this photo, it's a black and white photo of Jen, and she has her child. It seems like she's breastfeeding, but her child's hand is grabbing her face and she's just looking at the camera like, "I am done. This is over." Her caption is this photo gets at something that is about the relentlessness of being a parent to very young children right now. There is a poignancy to the fact that our rapidly growing kids are the only markers of time, we have this year. This photo, which I jokingly call my Richard Avedon selfie, captures all the love and weariness I've been experiencing since mid-March.

When we were judging and we're looking at these photos, it's about what encompasses this year and what makes this year special. We think about that in every year that we live in. For me personally, this very much spoke to me and I just thought it was great.

Brain: Joining us for a minute now is that photographer, Jen Wineman. Hi, Jen. Welcome to WNYC. Congratulations on winning one of our Best Photo on Your Phone in 2020 awards. Hi there.

Jen Wineman: Hi Brian. Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun.

Brian: How much did Laura nail, what you were maybe going through when you took this selfie?

Jen: Oh, she completely nailed it. What I will add is that, when I found out that you picked my photo, I looked back at my calendar of what had happened that day, I saw that I'd had two different Zoom meetings for two different theater productions that I was supposed to be directing, and I found out that day that they were both postponed indefinitely due to COVID.

Then later that day, I'm nursing and I'm just in my feelings about that, and then of course, my daughter, who at the time was just about five months, reached up and tried to rip my face off, which was pretty funny. It broke me out of my self pity and all my feelings that I was having. I felt like, what could be more 2020 than that moment?

Brian: Did you have any reluctance about submitting a selfie to the Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone contest, because it was looking at you and not looking outward?

Jen: I did because I do sometimes get annoyed with the constant sharing of selfies that people love to do, but I felt like I don't look that right in the picture. There's a desperation to how I was feeling, that I felt that other people would connect to that, as opposed to me posting or sharing a picture of where I just look good.

Brian: Laylah, for you as a portraiture photographer, even though this was one of Laura's picks, I wonder if you've seen this image and have any thoughts about it or where it fits in the kind of work that you do generally.

Laylah: This was one of my picks also. I really love this photograph and I think that portraiture is so important in relaying a story of the moment. It tells so much and it gives a lot of nuance in detail. I'm all for portraiture as a record of the times that we're living in. This photograph is very much reflective of a lot of parents in the city, especially parents of children who are in school, and schools were shut down and then there was a virtual learning. I think that this photograph is very, very powerful as a portrait, and a selfie, and expressing the story of parents in 2014 for sure.

Brian: Jen, congratulations again, and thank you for joining us. I'm glad your baby let you get through this phone call okay.

Jen: Oh, thank you so much, Brian. I'm a huge fan of yours. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you. We just have a minute left, so maybe I can give each of you a chance to tell listeners where to see more of your work. Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, how about for you?

Laylah: Well, I'm on Instagram a lot. I am at L-A-Y-L-A-H B, so Laylah B on Instagram and Laylahbarrayn.com is my website. See you there.

Brian: Barrayn is B-A-R-R-A-Y-N, correct? Not like the country. B-A-R-R-A-Y-N, Laylah Barrayn. Laura Roumanos, how about you and Photoville?

Laura: Look, we're all about uplifting and providing platforms for photographers like Laylah, so I recommend checking Laylah out. We actually still have some exhibitions from our festivals still up, so you can hit us at Nicholas Park, Jackie Robinson Park in Harlem, where we worked with the Schomburg Center. We worked with the Queens Museum at Astoria Park and also at Travis Park in Queens, Staten Island. Go to photoville.com or photoville.nyc or follow us @photoville on social media that's very much about supporting all visual storytellers. We love you all. Very important right now.

Brian: We love you too for spending so much time going through the 700 plus submissions to the Best Photo Sitting on Your Phone contest for 2020. Thank you, thank you, thank you and for being a great guests today.

Laura: Thank you.

Laylah: Thank you.

Laura: Thank you.

Laylah: Take care. Bye.

Brian: Listeners, if you want to see all eight of the winning photographs, you can go to wnyc.org, click on Brian Lehrer Show anytime.

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