M.F.A. candidate Lindsey Glover is the winner of the inaugural Margaret Bourke-White Photography Portfolio Prize. She was honored at a reception March 4 in President David Skorton's Day Hall office. Glover's winning portfolio entry, "Hollowed Out," will be displayed outside Skorton's office through May.

The portfolio competition, named for renowned photographer Margaret Bourke-White '27, carries a $7,500 cash prize.

The competition is "very broad-based and inclusive," said Department of Art Chair Patricia Phillips. "The award was the idea of an anonymous donor who is deeply interested in photography and contemporary art and who has an abiding commitment to its students. It's unique and distinct and an extremely generous award."

The annual competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate students at Cornell.

"I'm very interested in shining a brighter light on the arts at this university," Skorton said at the award reception.

Skorton has student artwork on the walls of his office, where he meets regularly with undergraduates, and student designs are featured on the holiday cards he and his wife, Robin Davisson, send out each year. And now the Bourke-White prize will be around "for a long time," Skorton added.

"Hollowed Out" is a series of prints investigating and reconstructing a momentary glimpse, according to Glover. Its ethereal scenes of empty backyards, with varying points of focus, are surrounded by black as if seen through a viewfinder, blocking all peripheral vision. The images were layered and projected on translucent paper, creating a sense of diffusion and loss.

"I was interested in capturing being just vulnerable in that moment, because you're taking something away when the shutter opens," Glover said.

Glover, 25, is a second-year M.F.A. candidate in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) and a graduate of the School of Art and Design at the New York State College of Ceramics in Alfred.

She produced the "Hollowed Out" series in late 2006 and showed it on campus in Tjaden Gallery last spring. The prints have also been shown in Rhine, Germany, where Glover says she hopes to return next year.

"It's work that I've admired for some time," said Stan Taft, AAP interim dean and associate professor of art. "It's extraordinary work for a graduate student. It's intense and provocative; I think it's very potent."

Jurors for the inaugural competition were Muhammad Iftikahr Dadi, professor of the history of art, and Nancy Green, senior curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

They selected Glover's winning entry out of 85 portfolios submitted from across the university, or more than 800 photographs in all. Phillips said she expects both the number of entries and jurors to increase next year.

Glover's work also includes video art and video installation. In January she was one of two M.F.A. students (with Alika Herreshoff) to receive the 2007 John Hartell Graduate Award, given by Department of Art faculty in recognition of excellence in studio practice. Her other awards include a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts and a Kloster Bentlage Residency.

For more information on the competition, visit http://www.aap.cornell.edu/aap/art/resources/bourke-white-prize.cfm.