An intriguing tidbit popped up recently on my Jane Austen Google alert: Alejandra Carles-Tolra, a young Spanish photographer based in London, recently won a £10,000 prize that will allow her to create a photo essay about – us!
“Carles-Tolra proposed investigating how a group identity impacts on the individual via photographs of ‘Janeites’, a community formed around the world and works of Jane Austen,” the British Journal of Photography reports. Her project, along with those of the other two winners of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, will be exhibited in three locations around Britain starting next January.
In past years, Carles-Tolra, originally from Barcelona, has created photographic projects on motorbike riders, female rugby players, and college students enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), among other subjects.
What do Janeites and rugby players have in common? I can’t wait to find out. . .