With so many entries pouring in at the verylastminute, I spent some time sifting before finding the photographs of contender John Mann.

Mann's images rose to the top, in part because they were familiar. I came across them last week in a newsletter from Newspace Center for Photography where he exhibited work as one of three photographers selected by Darius Himes for Newspace's 2007 National Juried Exhibition. Darius serves as one of HHS' super-star panelists as well.

The photographs also caught my attention because they are gorgeous and smart, turning the genre of travel photography on its head, suffusing the beginning and the end of the travel experience, marking the time when a place on a map ceases to be, and also remains, just a place on a map. Is this confusing? Mann is a little more clear:

Following five years of photographing the landscape and those who travel through it, the series Folded In Place finds its exploration of place though a visualization of the map as the final destination.

Many photographers, including Hot Shots Juliane Eirich, Ian Baguskas, Youngna Park, Kate Orne (to name a few), and contender Mann, are also travelers. We have a desire to know the unknown, to be out of our element, to experience something new, and sometimes we just want to be somewhere else. But we always come "home," eventually, and all of the knowledge and experience gained in the last adventure, no matter how engaging and exhilarating, are subject to memory which is a tricky map in itself.

Mann's maps, thoughtfully altered and photographed, tell stories seen and spun, long forgotten and oft recalled, from near and far. Take your own wander on Mann's website.