In 2nd: The Face of Defeat, Canadian photographer Sandy Nicholson documents the competitors who are forgotten about and under-celebrated — the second-place finishers.

Nicholson visited a range of fierce competitions, including the Air Guitar Finals, the Dance Sport Championships, rodeos, a spelling bee, a hamburger-eating contest and The Pillow Fight League. Just after the competitions end, he photographs the near-winners. The results are at times heartbreaking and hilarious. . .

See more photos, and read the book review in Lens Culture.

Bauleni Banda, sustenance maize farmer, Chikandwe, Malawi

The truth is that the development sector, just like any other business, needs revenue to survive.  Too frequently, this quest for funding uses these kind of dehumanizing images to draw pity, charity, and eventually donations from a largely unsuspecting public.  I found it outrageous that such an incomplete and often inaccurate story was being so widely perpetuated by the organizations on the ground – the very ones with the ability and the responsibility to communicate the realities of rural Africa accurately.

This is not to say that people do not struggle, far from it, but the photos I was seeing only told part of the story.  I thought that these images were robbing people of their dignity, and I felt that the rest of the story should be told as well.  Out of this came the idea for a photography project, which I am tentatively calling “Perspectives of Poverty”.  I am taking two photos of the same person; one photo with the typical symbols of poverty (dejected look, ripped clothes, etc.), and another of this person looking their very finest, to show how an image can be carefully constructed to present the same person in very different ways.  I want to bring to light some of the different assumptions we make about a person, especially when we see an image of “poverty” from rural Africa.