The hands in the photograph are immediately noticed (e.g. the smudged, mushy look of the hands). I wonder: why did the judges not noticed the hands in the photo?
Honestly I believe author did include this on purpose, since its very well known shortcoming at this point. He could have done image without fingers displayed and then nobody would have a clue. But clearly judges are oblivious to recent development in some too-old-for-this-shit fashion, so they didnt pick it up and then embarassed themselves.
And truly it is the eyes that capture your attention. The hands (or fingers rather) are something like a vignette.
The white smudges in the center/top, and the yellow glow on the top of the left side seem like artifacts of a manual development process. That's likely something that would interest a photography judge - maybe the judge(s) here were just biased toward experimental analog processing and was therefore blind to the issues we immediately see?