Prizes are awarded yearly to photographers and visual artists whose works are considered to be of exceptional artistic and humanistic merit. The photography and visual art judge is Dr. Craig Zabel, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Art History at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. He teaches courses in modern architectural history, with particular emphases on the architecture of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Urbana-Champaign, and has taught in the past at the University of Illinois, the University of Virginia, and Dickinson College. His current scholarly projects range from such topics as William Penn’s plan for Philadelphia to the Emerald City in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
 First PlaceInhabited Again ©Dan Shapiro, Ph.D. Department of HumanitiesJudge’s Comments: This is an extraordinary photograph of ruin and the devastation of time. The photo depicts the interior of a reinforced concrete building that clearly has been abandoned for many years. The photographer appears to have intensified the colors of the image. An otherwise gray interior contrasts with an unearthly palette of bright, saturated colors: random orange splotches above the crumbling stairs, searing blue reflections on the floor and a golden glow in the center. Foliage that is hyper green hovers just outside the windows, and a branch creeps in to the left to reclaim this derelict human folly. The trabeation of the reinforced concrete squarely frames this strong composition. The walls create layers of depth, and in the central distance a recumbent man temporarily reanimates the space with human life. Is he a romantic wanderer contemplating the passage of time, in a pose and mood similar to Tischbein’s painting Goethe in the Roman Campagna? 
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