JERWOOD PRIZE MONEY RESCINDED AMID AUTHORSHIP CONTROVERSY

The £2,000 ($3,868) Jerwood Photography Award has been withdrawn after an argument over the creative process and whether Paul Plews’s stylist on the project should have been credited as his collaborator, reports Louise Jury for The Independent_. Marieta Tsenova did not even know the work had been entered for the prize until she saw it on the cover of a magazine and contacted the prize-givers to claim it as partially her own. Roanne Dods, director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, which funds the award, said they were “obviously very disappointed” but felt they had no choice but to ask for the return of the money. Tsenova, ineligible for the prize, which is open only to recent graduates of UK visual-arts-degree courses, insisted that she had originally developed the concept and had contacted Plews asking him to participate.