© Becky Mursell

HOW I SEE YOU is an online exhibition collaboration between Shutter Hub and Float Magazine, running from 02 August 2021. Selected by Shutter Hub Creative Director, Karen Harvey, the exhibition showcases the work of 23 photographers bringing together touching and beautiful representations of people through objects, spaces and abstraction, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, and everything in between. Alongside the exhibition a series of awards were given, including portfolio reviews, a Curators Choice award, and the following Top 10 selection of exhibiting photographers.

As photographers we are always looking and seeing things differently. Whether it’s people that we see the beauty in (and they don’t see it themselves) or it’s something we see that reminds us of someone – it could be a place, a flower, a cup left on a table – a memory or sense of place and being. A photograph can be a memorial or tribute to someone lost, or a sign of appreciation for someone who is alive and loved.

© Brittany Severance

Brittany Severance (Curators Choice Award)

This project observes the daily rituals of my family. I seek to capture the imprint that they create on the space around them. Through my camera I explore how their inhabitance speaks to their personalities, preferences, and the dynamics of the household inside as well as outside their residence.

These photographs explore the human connection to memory and nature.

© Becky Mursell

Becky Mursell (Highly Commended)

A Second Helping is a personal project born out of a curiosity to get to know my Grandma better. Choosing to focus on a subject so close to home I found my camera became a powerful tool. It prompted me to ask questions and initiate conversations not previously held between us. It served as a reminder to stay present and observe the subtle changes that come with each visit, and I discovered that many clues about her life could be found in the small ‘day to day’ details.

© Dana Benoit

Dana Benoit

I am an art photographer and interior designer lucky enough to live and work up and down the west coast. I focus on bright colours, forgotten spaces, geometry, and light since 2014. The past year I have experienced loss, and this collection is lonely, haunting, with a little humour as well, because you have to find the joy as well.

© Marilyn Boatwright

Marilyn Boatwright

Marilyn Boatwright is an artist originally from Seffner, FL now living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Marilyn uses photography as a meditative process that manifests from a psychological space. Their work focuses on how image making can create potential realities and flatten time with an emphasis on memory and interpersonal relationships.

© Lingxue Hao

Lingxue Hao

These photos represent the torment and pain I experienced as a patient with major depression, and also record the process of my constant struggle with it. What’s more, it’s a visual diary about a depressive patient that I created as a photographer using lens language. The process of shooting and editing this project is also the process by which I try to find a suitable way to communicate with the outside world and society. The purpose of my works is to help those who may be indirectly impacted by depression to understand mental illness more comprehensively and establish an accurate perspective on the patients. We live in a society where people still hold prejudices against those with mental illness and fail to understand it. My photos serve as a window so that viewers can better understand and offer a helping hand to their families and friends who suffer from the same pain around them.

© Naomi James

Naomi James

My brother, Simon, died in 1985. He was 23 and I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about him. For many reasons, I’ve always found it difficult to talk about the events that resulted in his death and as a consequence, have rarely talked about his life either. As one of the most significant events in my life, it is probably the most hidden. The associations and memories I have of him include acts of kindness and generosity, childhood mishaps and misdemeanours and an array of objects that never fail to bring him to mind. These photographs place those fragmented memories in the context of the repressed and hidden. Each is a story safely tucked away yet largely untold.

© Emily Larsen

Emily Larsen

We spend a lot of our formidable years trying to discover what the world expects of us. How we are going to fit into the puzzle. We look at our society for cues and mercilessly compare ourselves to the commercially manufactured idols of our generation. Our hips are too wide. Our love handles too pronounced. Our hair is too thick or not thick enough. We’re too short, too tall, to smart, too dumb. We feel too much. We aren’t strong enough or rich enough or talented enough. We struggle to find a place in a world censored and curated to erase our differences, uniqueness and general celebration of individuality.

With Grace is an ongoing project documenting the journey of a young woman through adolescence. A case study in confidence, strength and growth, Grace has allowed me the privilege of sharing her intimate journey over the last seven years. At twelve she was diagnosed with a fast acting, little-understood illness of the breast tissue that, within 9 months, resulted in an emergency double mastectomy. Her experience with puberty has been everything but traditional, much like the young woman herself. A cool spring in the scorching wastelands of society’s expectations of young women, she embraces her own inherent worth and trudges her own path.

© Jillian Abir MacMaster

Jillian Abir MacMaster

The series Teta/Tata explores my grandmother (‘Teta’ in Arabic) during a short time that I lived with her and the years following. Since emigrating to the United States, she has always lived in the same house. This home is a vast collection of her life as a Palestinian woman pre- and post-Nakba. As I photograph her and her home, I learn more about my past and living family and the experience of Palestinian refugees.

© Aline Smithson

Aline Smithson

As an artist, I try to look for or create moments that are at once familiar, yet unexpected. The odd juxtapositions that we find in life are worth exploring, whether it is with humour, compassion, or by simply taking the time to see them. I have been greatly influenced by the Japanese concept of celebrating a singular object. I tend to isolate subject matter and look for complexity in simple images, providing an opportunity for telling a story in which all is not what it appears to be. The poignancy of childhood, aging, relationships, family, and moments of introspection or contemplation continue to draw my interest. I want to create pictures that evoke a universal memory.

© Dineke Versluis

Dineke Versluis

I didn’t know much about my hosts, they were my father’s friends. He had asked them if I could stay at their place for a night or two. Paris, summer of 2018, in the early hours of the morning as I quietly left the flat to catch my train, the air was still cool. Today was going to be one of the hottest days of the summer. This is how I see this old couple that kindly hosted me for a few nights. They were kind and incredibly calm, they had created this little haven of peace in Paris.