Photographers who were asked to judge the Monochrome Awards, a black-and-white photography competition that charges entry fees ranging from $15-$25 tell PDN that they never judged the competition. The stories of these photographers, and the refusal of Monochrome Awards representatives to respond to PDN’s questions about the organization and one of its organizers, Sebastian Markis, suggest there may be a connection between the Monochrome Awards and the International Photographer of the Year awards, another competition that came under scrutiny recently and is suspected of falsely promoting its jurors. Markis is also involved in a third organization, Monovision Magazine, which runs a black-and-white photography competition, PDN has learned.

The mystery behind these three contests has us asking: Who is Sebastian Markis?

As we reported Tuesday, the IPOTY competition was called into question when several of the photographers identified as judges for the competition revealed they had not been involved in the judging. They posted an open letter on social media questioning the integrity of the contest.

Peter Braunholz, one of the photographers who had been falsely listed as an IPOTY judge, pointed out that one of the past organizers of IPOTY, a person calling himself “Sebastian Markis,” is now an organizer of the Monochrome Awards. Markis had asked photographers Nicola Davison Reed and Allison Barnes to judge the Monochrome Awards, but neither of them saw any entries. Barnes says that she was listed as a judge in 2016, never judged, and then was listed again in 2017 without her permission. “I have asked them to remove my name several times,” Barnes told PDN. But an announcement of the 2017 Monochrome Award winners on Photogrvphy.com lists Barnes as a judge. “I think it’s terrible that they are using the name of known photographers to get people to submit their work,” Barnes says. “I was even contacted by an artist who was submitting their work because I was listed as one of the jurors. Unfortunately, I had to tell them that it was not so.”

Ben Nixon was also listed as a judge for the 2017 competition. Nixon told PDN, “They never followed up with me after I agreed to be a judge.” He judged the contest only after he saw that judging was already taking place.

PDN tried to contact Monochrome Awards. A representative of the competition— who did not identify his- or herself by name—said in an email that Markis used to be involved with IPOTY but left “when the owner of the website changed” in 2016. The Monochrome Awards did not reply to PDN’s request for more information about Sebastian Markis or the company that owns either of the competitions.

Sebastian Markis has a Facebook page and more than 2,500 Facebook friends, many of them photographers, but there is no personal information on the Facebook page, and the majority of the wall posts are links to Monovisions Magazine, which reprints press releases and posts interviews with photographers. Sebastian Markis also contacted several photographers about judging the Monovisions competition. Monovisions has not responded to PDN‘s questions about Markis, and about who owns Monovisions Magazine and the Monovisions Photography Awards.

Emails Markis sent to jurors for the Monochrome and Monovision awards are basically identical. “There will be a lot of media exposure and social media viral on this event,” Markis wrote to a judge of the Monovisions competition. “As one of our Judges, your name and logo certainly will get benefits from this exposure and viral (partner websites, press releases, certificates, etc.).”

So who is Sebastian Markis? A person with this name is connected to at least three online photography competitions. The websites of these competitions list no contact people, addresses or company names. Has anyone had contact with this person? Is Markis a well-meaning but disorganized photography enthusiast who has collected money from photographers for sloppily run contests? Or is this an elaborate scam?

The announcement of the 2017 Monochrome Awards claims that the competition “received 8942 submissions from 87 countries.” If this is true, even if all of the entries were for the amateur competition fee of $15, the organizers would have collected more than $134,000. The professional winner received $2000, while the amateur winner received $1000.

UPDATE:

Curator and writer Hester Keijser has pointed out the websites for the IPOTY, Monochrome Awards, Monovisions Photography Awards, and six other photography publications and contests appear to be owned and operated by the same enterprise. According to the internet research tool SpyOnWeb, which uses publicly available information to track website ownership, these nine sites are linked to the same Google Analytics ID.

fineartphotoawards.com; iphotographeroftheyear.com; monoawards.com; monovisions.com; ndawards.net; photocontestguru.com; photogrvphy.com; seethatart.com; www.ndawards.net

There are further connections between these sites, according to SpyOnWeb. The website of Monovisions Magazine shares an IP address with photographer Maciej Leszczynski. The ND Magazine and ND Awards sites share an IP address with the website of photographer Martin Stavars. PDN tried to reach Stavars two days ago because he is listed as a judge for the Monovisions Photography Awards. Stavars never responded.

PDN has also learned that in 2013, Sebastian Markis emailed a photographer to invite her to submit her work to ND Magazine.

According to the domain lookup tool WhoIs, the IP location for the Monochrome Awards site is in Poland.

Related:

INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR AWARDS A SCAM? JUDGES RAISE ALARM AND ORGANIZERS GO SILENT