Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2017

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Leica

Oskar Barnack Award 2017

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Special Edition Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2017 LFI PHOTOGRAPHIE GMBH Springeltwiete 4, 20095 Hamburg www.lfi-online.de, mail@lfi-online.de ISSN: 0937-3977 Editors-in-chief: Inas Fayed, Frank P. Lohstöter Art Direction: Brigitte Schaller Editorial Office: Carla Susanne Erdmann, Katrin Iwanczuk, Bernd Luxa, Ulrich Rüter, Olaf Stefanus, Katrin Ullmann Layout: Thorsten Kirchhoff PHOTO EDITOR: Carol Körting TrANSLATION: Osanna Vaughn The magazine and all its written and pictorial content are copyrighted, and can not be reproduced without written permission.

Leica – registered Trademark – 91869

Content

Preface Dear friends of photography,

There are quite a few facts concerning the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, one of the longest-running photo awards ever. Did you know it was set up in 1979, at a time when Leica Camera didn’t exist as a company, but as a product brand of Ernst Leitz GmbH, Wetzlar? Or that one of the most highly regarded photographers today, Sebastião Salgado, has won it twice – at a time when he was still relatively unknown? Artistically speaking, there are even more important facts: the series should include twelve pictures that tell a story, showing the togetherness and interaction of human beings and their surroundings. The winning pictures will all be exhibited in Berlin after the award ceremony on 13 September, and then in Leica Galleries around the world – there are now 17 of them! All this shows the dedication of Leica, its employees and the owners to our claim: Leica, das Wesentliche! (Leica, the essential!) Please look at the pictures closely, maybe in the spirit of a jury, and enjoy the art of photography – photography that can be seen as a lighthouse in the ocean of snapshots taken every day! We at Leica are committed to showing and promoting photography as one of the leading art forms of the 21st century.

Yours, Andreas Kaufmann, Leica Camera AG

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Interview with Douglas So

Terje Abusdal 8 Slash & Burn 26

Patrick Willocq

You Cannot Pick a Stone with One Finger

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Aleksey Kondratyev

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Ice Fishers

Dominic Nahr Nothing to See Here

Ekaterina Sevrouk Fremd bin ich eingezogen

Yoann Cimier 58 Nomad’s Land 66

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Gideon Mendel Drowning World

Emilien Urbano War of a Forgotten Nation

Viktoria Sorochinski Lands of No-Return

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Clara Chichin

Under the Eyes that Few Minutes Exhaust

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Vera Torok

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Accidentally on Purpose

Sergey Melnitchenko Behind the Scenes

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Winners & Finalists 2017

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Winners 1980 – 2016 loba

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“A benchmark of excellence” Interview The die is cast – Terje Abusdal and Sergey Melnitchenko are the winners of the 37th Leica Oskar Barnack Awards. Abusdal’s poetic, Slash & Burn series won the main Award; Melnitchenko’s intense reportage Behind the Scenes, won the Newcomer Award. LFI spoke about LOBA 2017 with jury member Douglas So.

Douglas So, jury member 2017, is founder and director of the F11 Foto Museum in Hong Kong

Further information about the award can be found at www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.de

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Leica Camera AG has been granting the Leica Oskar Barnack Award since 1979, and, in addition, the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award for photographers under 26 since 2009. In 2017 around 2700 photographers from 104 countries submitted works to the renowned photo competition.

“The winning and finalist series are defined by their enormous diversity. Each photographer’s individual eye and their artistic interpretation of the competition theme – the relationship between people and the environment – makes every one of the series special in its own unique way,” says Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director and General Manager of Leica Galleries International.

Terje Abusdal from Norway gained the favour of the jury for his long-term project, Slash & Burn, about the Forest Finns, a naturebound ethnic group in Norway. He can look forward to prize money of €25 000. For the Newcomer Award it was the Ukrainian photographer Sergey Melnitchenko: his empathetic, intimate reportage about dancers in a Chinese club will be awarded €10 000. The winners also receive Leica M equipment worth €10 000. Each finalist receives €2500. The award ceremony will be held in Berlin on 13 September. The large exhibition of all twelve series will be on display from 14 September to 15 October, 2017, at the Neue Schule für Fotografie in Berlin; after that, the winning series will be presented at Paris Photo, and during the PhotoLux Festival in Lucca, Italy, both in November. The exhibition will then move on to other locations. LFI spoke with jury member Douglas So, about his impressions of this year’s competition.

LFI: Tradition and mystique, origins and belonging, facts and fiction – Slash & Burn, the winning series by Terje Abusdal, deals with all of this. Was it also your favourite?

Douglas So: First of all, I wish to congratulate Terje Abusdal for the fabulous series Slash & Burn.

In addition to all the qualities you described, the portfolio also manifests beauty and depth in a poetic sense. Every time I looked at the portfolio there was more to be discovered and appreciated.

Slash & Burn received strong support from the jury during a highly competitive selection process.

Over recent years a lot about photography has changed – in what manner do you think that an award like the LOBA is still relevant today?

LOBA offers a reputable international platform for photographers – professionals and newcomers – to show their works, tell their stories and realise their dreams. The award is a proven benchmark of excellence. Not only is it relevant, the award is coveted by photographers who would like the world to see and appreciate their works.

In many ways, the award remains one of the most important Halls of Fame of Photography.

The LOBA always deals with series – how important to you is the series in comparison to the individual picture?

I always love photo essays. Luck and coincidence could sometimes play a significant role shaping an individual image. It takes much more to build a coherent and

aesthetically strong series to convey a powerful message or interpret a complicated issue which words and single images could not deliver.

This year’s Newcomer Award has gone to a reportage series on a difficult topic – an impressive piece of work for someone so young …

The Chinese night club series is an unusual and difficult subject which is rarely seen or discussed anywhere. For a young and foreign photographer to capture these images must have been a daunting exercise. I was much impressed by his high quality, candid and strong documentary photography.

Is there anything particular that surprised you about the works submitted for this award?

I was pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of works submitted for the award. The photographers were clearly trying to convey to the jury, through their works, what they believe to be relevant, important and unique. The challenge for the jury, I felt, was how to compare apples with oranges at times, but the fruit basket in front of us

was one of the most fantastic ones I have ever encountered!

You have already exhibited many great photographers in the F11 Foto Museum – what excited you about being part of the jury?

It was a wonderful privilege serving on the jury of the prestigious LOBA, which is very well known in the Asian photography world.

I enjoyed looking at the portfolios and working with my fellow jury members, who were experienced, knowledgeable and observant.

If you could make a wish directed at future contenders – what would that wish be?

Prove that photography is one of the most beautiful of art forms.

Please make my wish come true. interview: inas fayed

The Jury (from left): Karin Rehn-Kaufmann (Artdirector Leica Galleries worldwide), Douglas So, Scarlett Coten (LOBA winner 2016), Michelle Dunn Marsh (Executive Director Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle USA), Christian Pohlert (Managing Picture Editor F.A.Z., Germany)

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LEICA

Oskar Barnack Award | 2017

Terje Abusdal Slash & Burn

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Terje Abusdal Interview In the 16th and 17th century, many Finns migrated to Sweden, to an area that is now part of Norway and known as the Finnskogen, the Forest of the Finns. Slash and burn was a key element in their culture.

Abusdal dedicated his winning series to this ethnic group.

For more about the photographer see page 122

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LFI: What motivated you to realize the Slash & Burn series?

Terje Abusdal: I’m a storyteller who is very curious about themes that have both contemporary social relevance and traces of the past. For my series about the Forest Finns it’s the same, and the beginning was quite something.

In what way?

One time when I was photographing a gathering in the Forest of the Finns, I was asked by a shaman why I was so interested in their culture. When I could not give an answer right away, he consulted his pendulum and said it is because I was a Forest Finn myself, six generations ago. Whether that’s true or not, one of the main reasons I began and continued this project is that I feel a real connection to this particular group of people and their culture.

Did the project influence your view on life in any way?

I found the Finnskogen region to be such a magical place, one which I will return to also without a camera. I guess after living so many years in the city, I learned to appreciate a simpler life again.

Finding time to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. The Forest Finns are a bit like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings: not hasty creatures. And this suited the project just perfectly. You’re forced to slow down, as if you were doing large format photography. Also, I learned how to build a smokesauna. In theory, at least. Give me an ax, some spruce and you’ll never be cold again!

Nowadays the Forest Finns, in addition to Scandinavian Romani, Roma, Jews and Kvener, are recognized as one of the five national minorities in Norway.

Yes, and that is the interesting part of this project, because it is not only about the Forest Finns, but, in the bigger picture, it’s a story of migration, identity and belonging.

In Norway we use the terms 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation immigrants. But at what point does one stop being one thing and become something else? Is it our blood, philosophy or history that decides where we belong? In fact, the only official criterion for belonging to this minority is that, regardless of your ethnic origin, you simply feel that you are a Forest Finn.

Many of your photographs have a magical touch. How did you manage to fill them with mystery?

I mean it both senses: literally and technically?

To start with, from quite a straight, documentary approach; then it slowly changed to include more conceptual methods such as staging and physical interventions in the photographs. It is a mix of facts and fiction. As I learned more about the history of the Forest Finns, it became clear to me that I had to reinvent the past to tell this story. Because how can you photograph something as intangible as culture, especially when the thing that defined it in the first place doesn’t exist anymore?

And how did you finally deal with this challenge?

So, to be specific, I took certain elements of the past – fire, smoke and shamanism – and introduced them into the story. The mystery that you are referring to is a deliberate

attempt to create a kind of Narnia, a magical world, which the idea of the Forest Finns inhabits.

I agree, as I can see that in your images; but how did you handle it technically?

Well, let’s say that I treated some images with a torch. The reason behind this is to ‘put’ the Forest Finns, who were characterized by slash-and-burn farming, physically into the picture.

You prefer not to reveal too much of the detail as to the how and what?

No, it kind of kills the magic.

Photography as a documentary medium stands in contrast to mystery. Why do you think photography is so good at capturing a sense of mysticism?

True, it is a documentary medium, but it has the ability to capture a moment, idea, or place outside its context and thus create a new meaning – a mystery if you will.

So, by frame, shape or form, one can convey something different to that which is actually being photographed. The borders between fact and fiction can be distorted.

One of the images in my series is of a haystack; but it works as a metaphor for a ghost, a magical being. In reality, however, it’s just a haystack. Through working in series one can really play with that: pooling a group of images together in a narrative, you can create a completely new world, a mood, a feeling, a sense of place. A photographic series is a bit like cinema. interview: Katrin Ullmann

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2 017 Finalist

Patrick Willocq You Cannot Pick a Stone with One Finger

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2 017 Finalist

Aleksey Kondratyev Ice Fishers

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Dominic Nahr Nothing to See Here

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Ekaterina Sevrouk Fremd bin ich eingezogen

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Ekaterina Sevrouk

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Ekaterina Sevrouk

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Yoann Cimier Nomad’s Land

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Yoann Cimier

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Gideon Mendel Drowning World

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2017 Finalist

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Emilien Urbano War of a Forgotten Nation

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Emilien Urbano

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Emilien Urbano

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Viktoria Sorochinski Lands of No-Return

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Clara Chichin Under the Eyes that Few Minutes Exhaust

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Clara Chichin

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Clara Chichin

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Vera Torok Accidentally on Purpose

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LEICA

Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer | 2017

Sergey Melnitchenko Behind the Scences

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Sergey Melnitchenko Interview For his Behind the Scenes series, the Ukrainian photographer takes us backstage to gain insight into life working at a dance club in China. The winner of the Newcomer Award speaks about his experiences and what they mean for his photography.

For more about the photographer see page 144

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LFI: What made you start a career in photography?

Sergey Melnitchenko: It’s a funny story, a very unusual story. In 2009 I had my tongue pierced, and when I showed it to my grandmother she said she would buy me a camera of my own if I took that earring out of my tongue again. So, I did – in five minutes! And that’s when I got my first digital camera – a Canon PowerShot SX100. That’s how I began to take pictures.

Where did the idea for the Behind the Scenes series come from?

Two years ago, I came to Asia to work as a dancer. In the spring of 2016 we were performing at a Chinese club, that was more like a huge bar with a stage, because none of the visitors there were dancing. That’s when the idea for Behind the Scenes emerged.

What was it that fascinated you so much about the place?

The smell of cigarettes and the very drunk Chinese girls who were working at the club. Transvestites, girls bathing in tubs of beer, drunk actors and even more drunk visitors. All of this at the club where I was working.

What did you want to show with Behind the Scenes?

This is the reverse, the invisible side of the club, the atmosphere, which I became a part of. Behind the scenes at the club there is more burlesque than on the stage; the concentration of sexual fluids is more powerful than oxygen. There’s no falsehood – it’s not a scene, it’s their everyday life, our life, or rather mine. I had

pleasure in what I was doing. I was glad for every picture I took. That was as I wanted it to be. So, first of all, I did it for my own satisfaction.

What kind of stylistic elements do you like to use and why?

It’s impossible to explain. When you see that your photo is ready to be shown – it’s ready. Maybe it doesn’t even need to go through post-production. It’s like when you paint a picture.

You like to use various techniques. How do you choose the technique for each project?

Everything happens by chance, by itself. And I’m very thankful to destiny for this.

Why do you prefer colour to black and white, and natural light to flash?

No flash was used. I’ve just started looking at the colours and making them brighter and more saturated on my laptop, as I understood that this series had to be very colourful.

Many details would have lost value if I’d taken black and white pictures. I didn’t always take my camera with me everywhere; but now I do. I always carry my Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 with me and take photos of everything around me.

Behind the Scenes seems to have an analogue touch and feel.

I shoot my series with different cameras – digital, film, instant, action camera, and even mobile phone. So I use everything.

At the time of creating the Behind the Scenes series, I was really missing film cameras, so I decided to make the pictures look like film shots, and I think it fits the series better than if they were to look like fully digital ones.

Do you have any role models among photographers? Who has influenced your perception?

I’m not inspired by photographers but by photographs. I follow many online editions like Featureshoot and look at tons of pictures every day. I’m also inspired by interviews.

When I read them, I want to do more and more.

Do you feel a connection to other art forms?

No, I’m in love with photography more than with painting. I love great photos and it doesn’t matter to me who took the shot.

Please describe your visual approach on the topics photographed; how do you develop your visual language?

As I said before, I do what I want to do and I put my series together with the help of different kinds of cameras. This series really has nothing in common with my other projects, and how it came about was also a surprise to me. Really. Before China I was working on nude art, making series with people and staged photography. In China I started taking photos on the street with my mobile phone, and photos of my daily life with the instant camera.

Why was Behind the Scenes possibly different from other series you’ve photographed?

Behind the Scenes was something very, very new for me. It’s a mix of documentary and conceptual art photography. And what’s interesting, is that I want to continue working in such a style: I love it. interview: Carla S. Erdmann

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Terje Abusdal

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Patrick Willocq

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Aleksey Kondratyev

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Dominic Nahr

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Ekaterina Sevrouk

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Yoann Cimier

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Gideon Mendel

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Emilien Urbano

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Viktoria Sorochinski

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Clara Chichin

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Vera Torok

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2 017 Leica Oskar Barnack Award

Terje Abusdal Slash & Burn They migrated from Finland to Sweden a number of centuries ago, settling areas that are part of Sweden and Norway today. Slash and burn agricultural techniques were a central part of their culture.

Countless generations later they are still living there: the Forest Finns. A documentary approach with a mystical touch.

Is it possible to photograph something as intangible

as culture, especially if it is one that has nearly died out? This question is the starting point for Terje Abusdal’s Slash & Burn series. Abusdal, whose work tends to circle around the subjects of migration and identity, went to Finnskogen, an isolated area in southeast Norway on the border to Sweden, to realise his graduation project for the Danish School of Journalism. Finnskogen means Forest of the Finns, and refers to the region where Finnish migrants settled during the 16th and 17th centuries. Using slash and burn techniques, they opened up new agricultural land for growing rye.

Today, most Forest Finns work as farmers, lumberjacks or forest wardens. Their original language is now only found on the name signs entering their settlements; the Norsk Skogfinsk Museum in the county of Hedmark remembers the culture of the Forest Finns. Only a few of their traditions and rituals have survived into daily life today: shamanic customs, belief in the power of magic and symbols that contain a healing power, or even protect from evil spirits.

Abusdal dedicated a photo project to this naturebound ethnic group, who are now officially acknowledged as a minority in Norway. In the process, he quickly reached the limits of pure documentary photography.

“I introduced certain elements from the Forest Finns’ past – fire, smoke, shamanism – to the story,” the Norwegian photographer explains. These elements were not only included in the picture compositions: Abusdal exposed the photos to heat and fire during ‘post production’ as a reference to their former slash and burn techniques. It is an approach that contributes to the fact that reality and imagination in these images are connected in a confusing yet organic manner.

Little by little, Abusdal created a fictional universe, a magical world that is inherent to the idea of the Forest Finns. Consequently, his symbolically loaded pictures, to which photography lends a certain type of surreal aesthetic, manage to give new life to a buried culture.

In the series, the borders between truth and fiction have become blurry, have virtually disappeared: a smouldering haystack becomes a metaphor for a ghostly being, a spirit; a woman bearing a ritual drum emerges from a threatening, dark nothingness; another one, wrapped up in furs and giving the viewer a questioning glance, pauses as though rooted in the snow; and a mysterious cloud of light – created by magic? – shimmers in a harmless, snowy landscape. The enigmatic mysticism that defines Abusdal’s images, has a lasting effect. Just like the powers of a shaman. katrin ullmann loba

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1 Bugim anabi nuhu chugu (Bugum, the fire festival of prophet Noah)

2 Portrait of one of the protagonists

3 Dagomba (Tohazie, the grandfather of Dagbon Kingdom)

4 Portrait of one of the protagonists

5 Kachegu naa yanga (Gundo Naa, the granddaughter of the great Kachegu Naa)

6 Portrait of one of the protagonists

7 Naamuni nyela zagyini luglikam (God is everywhere)

8 Portrait of the protagonists

9 Suglolana mpaari obayili (A patient person gets to occupy the position of his father)

10 Portrait of one of the protagonists

11 Nuni nyeri o dini (Who sees his own?)

1 2 Portrait of the protagonist

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Patrick Willocq You Cannot Pick a Stone with One Finger The French photographer’s series was produced with the Dagomba, an ethnic group living in the north of Ghana. In close collaboration with these people, Patrick Willocq developed six decorative stages loaded with symbolism, reflecting the past, present and future of the Dagomba.

Three men carrying grass torches with stylised flames

walk down a pink carpet, descending from a ship that obviously lies on land. A few animals can also be seen: an elephant, an eagle, a lion, a crocodile and a dove. The dove carries a green branch in its beak, clarifying that the vessel in the picture is Noah’s Ark. On the ninth day of the first month of their lunar calendar, the Dagomba, who have made their home in northern Ghana, celebrate the Bugum Festival, a fire festival in commemoration of their ancestors. According to their lore, the festival goes back to the day that Noah’s Ark became stranded on Mount Ararat, when Noah and his family also carried torches to explore the surroundings.

In this manner, the French photographer Patrick Willocq gives form to the myths of the Dagbon Kingdom (pictures 3 to 6), the conversion to Islam (pictures 7 and 8), the musical transmission of court history by drummers and fiddlers (pictures 9 and 10), and the hierarchical structure of the kingdom, that exists alongside Ghana’s state institutions (pictures 11 and 12). In addition to Islam, that reached the 12th century kingdom in the 18th century, animist structures still remain in place and both threads have become indivisibly interwoven in a unique Islamo-Dagomba culture, as metaphorically represented in picture 7: on the left side you can see a traditional shrine ghost, on the right a djinn from the inner realm of Islam. An ant, a messenger of the gods which, according to Dagomba belief, can establish a connection to the ancestors, is crawling towards him. It also plays a role in Islam, as the 27th Sura of the Koran, An-Naml, is named after the colony-building insect. In addition to the six stage sets, Willocq took portraits of some of the protagonists in the series.

For You cannot pick a stone with one finger – the series is named after a Dagomba saying – Willocq started by interviewing the Ya Naa, the King of the Dagomba, as well as influential chieftains, tribal elders, musicians, university professors, scholars of Islam and a shaman.

He is concerned with conveying the iconographic world of the Dagomba. That is why the largest portion of the work for this project – which was commissioned by the Noorderlicht Foundation, Groningen, and the African Studies Centre in Leiden, Netherlands – was not taken up with the photography, but with research and, above all, the construction of the sets. This Willocq did together with native artists and craftspeople using materials available on location. One effort that always pays off for Willocq is defined by his motto as a photographer: “Turn your subjects into actors!” He certainly sets the stage for them to do so. bernd luxa loba

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Aleksey Kondratyev Ice Fishers Improvised tents to protect against the cold, or Arte Poverastyle installations? Aleksey Kondratyev’s Ice Fishers series is dedicated to plastic shelters built

by Kazakh fishermen as protection against frigid winter temperatures. A photo series that explores the borderline between art and documentation.

Semi-transparent tents, misshappen covered struc-

tures set up in an undefined space. At a first glance they appear rather like modern sculptures exhibited in a White Cube, a white space. This exhibition concept, that first established itself in the art scene in the 1920s, ensures that, by using a neutral white, the architecture surrounding a gallery’s exhibition space withdraws into the background. It serves basically to prevent any interaction between the architecture and the work of art. The undistracted attention of the viewer should be directed towards the exhibit.

However, are the minimalistic plastic sculptures that we see in this particular White Cube actually art? They appear to have been lost and forgotten somewhere in the middle of nowhere; though they are, in fact, located on a frozen river close to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

What is more, they make no claim to being art interpreted at some kind of meta-level; they have been built with a purely functional purpose in mind. The little tents, simple one-man shelters, serve to protect Kazakh fishermen from the cold. With temperatures ranging up to minus forty degrees Celsius, these men fish through small holes in the metre-thick ice, hoping to catch perch and bream. They are protected by a thin layer of plastic: supermarket bags, old travel carryalls and left-over packaging glued together.

Kirghiz photographer Aleksey Kondratyev stumbled across these fishermen and took the first pictures in 2014, while travelling through the former Soviet Union.

He returned for a month in 2016, during the winter of course, in January. When asked if he could photograph them, many of the ice fishermen were hesitant at first.

“They thought I wanted to take portraits of them,” Kondratyev explains. Once they realised that it was their structures he was interested in, they allowed him – though they were rather bewildered. Kondratyev was more fascinated by the materials and the resulting aesthetics of the home-made tents, than by the fishermen themselves. “What I was interested in was how they appeared to look like unintended sculptures.” Sculptures where the nature of the materials used defined the form they acquired. It seems more than obvious that, for his Ice Fishers project, the young photographer referenced the work of the artist Eva Hesse – one of the most significant representatives of Arte Povera, an artistic direction that makes use of ‘poor’ common and everyday materials – and the work of the minimalist, conceptual artist Robert Morris. So, do Kondratyev’s pictures show modern sculptures or improvised structures? The answer is in the eye of the beholder. katrin ullmann loba

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1 Namie 2014: A tunnel lit up in red light in the high security zone

2 Okuma 2014: A nuclear plant worker at the control centre for Reactors 1 and 2

4 Iwaki 2014: A picture of waves hangs in a house inside the high security zone

5 Namie 2014: Cow carcasses are tested for radiation

6 Namie 2016: 2500 people are still missing – the police search for them

7 Kawauchi 2014: A family portrait from happier days

9 Tokyo 2011: Sachiko Masuyama worries about the future of her baby

10 Minamisoma 2016: A fire in a bar close to the high security zone

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3 Namie 2014: A public Geiger counter measures the radiation

8 Tomioka 2014: A shop window mannequin in an abandoned car

2 017 Finalist

Dominic Nahr Nothing to See Here 11 March, 2011: the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history produced a worse-case scenario at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Dominic Nahr has visited the area ten times since then.

What can you show when there is nothing there to see? The photographer’s quiet images capture the latent threat.

On March 11, 2011, the worst earthquake in Japan’s his-

tory took place off the country’s coast. The resulting tsunami cost the lives of around 20 000 people, destroyed thousands of homes and hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with full force. The earthquake caused meltdowns in three of the reactors. The radio active material discharged was well over twice that of Chernobyl, contaminating the air, water and ground.

The Swiss photographer Dominic Nahr (born 1983) has been to the area ten times – the first time was just after the catastrophe. “Of course, I want to know what has changed since 2011. At the same time, I want to do something so that the people and their situations are not forgotten. I want to give them a voice. Each time I was able to move around more freely,” he says. People were told they should go back, that they were safe. They returned to areas abandoned by many residents, and some even live within the twenty kilometre zone around Daiichi, which was forbidden at one point. They have returned to their daily lives. On the whole, it is only nuclear plant workers who enter the ten kilometre zone.

The highly contaminated areas are still cut off, and can only be accessed with a special pass given to families who have houses or businesses in that area, so that they can visit them from time to time.

The images resulting from Nahr’s visits speak of a fragile everyday life: policemen searching for the roughly 2500 people still reported missing after the tsunami.

The main road passing by just a kilometre away from the power plant has been opened, but people can only drive along it, they can not stop. A new highway has also been built. Both roads cut through irradiated areas, as the Geiger counters set up along the way confirm. Images of piles of rubble, of shipwrecks and of people poisoned by radioactivity are unnecessary to capture the degree of suffering. “Working in Fukushima is arduous, it’s difficult to get the right pictures. Nothing is happening, nothing is moving – yet there’s a threat there that needs to find its way into the pictures,” Nahr says, explaining the challenges of this work. A quiet suffering reigns after the great quake, and this is reflected in the pictures: quiet, withdrawn, and yet very close. Many of the photos were taken in the high security zone, some in the control centre of the melted-down reactors; yet there is also the mother in Tokyo, who learnt of her pregnancy two days before the earthquake and now worries about her child’s health. “I want to return in 2018 and spend longer there,” says Nahr. How will things look around the exclusion zone? Will normality return? Nahr’s pictures will surely tell us. katrin iwanczuk loba

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7 N 47° 36’ 6.816” – E 13° 8’ 21.228”

8 N 47° 39’ 39.084” – E 13° 47’ 13.122”

9 N 47° 45’ 6.046” – E 13° 14’ 23.891”

10 N 47° 31’ 23.437”– E 13° 30’ 50.118”

11 N 47° 47’ 18.132” – E 13° 5’ 46.266”

1 2 N 47° 47’ 59” – E 13° 2’ 21”

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2 017 Finalist

Ekaterina Sevrouk Fremd bin ich eingezogen Landscape motifs that are reminiscent of classic paintings from the era of German Romanticism; yet, the presence of African men in the pictures infringes on the viewers’ expectations. The outcome is a fruitful dialogue between a well-known form of imagery and contemporary politics.

Mountains, lakes and thick forests: the photographs

open up broad vistas of typical Salzkammergut landscapes, the same panoramas chosen by painters at the beginning of the 19th century, creating a soulful canon of imagery empathizing the grandeur of nature. However, instead of decorative figures like the shepherds, monks or wayfarers normally seen in such paintings, we find Ekaterina Sevrouk’s pictures feature dark-skinned men, challenging what could be called the established order.

They are refugees from Africa looking for asylum in Austria: Sevrouk selected them for her project from among the people she met at a so-called first reception centre.

Understanding the fateful stories of those portrayed was very important to her, so as to establish a sense of trust, and to allow for a collaboration in carrying out her vision. She had, in fact, already explored the various locations in advance, doing extensive research and taking long hikes throughout the countryside; the form that each picture took in the end, however, was decided together with the men, as they chose the precise location and the poses they would adopt.

Sevrouk does not show the men’s real, everyday life, but rather places them in a staged setting. This artistic confusion serves to question the current situation in Europe in an even more sustained manner. “My efforts as a photographer are directed at using my artistic means of expression to create aesthetically demanding pictures, that reach out beyond daily politics and purely documentary photography. I try to contribute something to society, inciting the viewer to question to what degree we still stand for certain human ideas and a spirit of elucidation, as defined in early Romanticism.” The title of the series, which was started two years ago and is now complete, also gives rise to further associations. Fremd bin ich eingezogen (As a stranger I arrived) is a line taken from one of German Romanticism’s most famous tone poem: for his Winterreise (Winter Journey) song cycle, Franz Schubert drew on the poetic words of Wilhelm Müller, creating an emotional piece about the desperate spiritual state of a wayfarer.

“Defined by my personal life and immigrant story, as well as influenced by the war photography of my deceased father, Sergey Sevrouk, I’m particularly interested in the lives and circumstances of migrants and refugees.”

Ekaterina Sevrouk was born in Moscow in 1975. Her move to Germany took her through Austria, where she lived in Vienna and St. Gilgen from 2010 to 2015. She has been studying at the Neue Schule für Fotografie in Berlin since 2015, but returns to Austria regularly to work on different projects. ulrich rüter loba

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2 017 Finalist

Yoann Cimier Nomad’s Land Makeshift shelters, tarps billowing in the wind, quickly knocked together wooden shacks under a scorching sun – Yoann Cimier explored the beaches of Tunisia for his Nomad’s Land series.

There the photographer found a micro-cosmos that brought to mind Bedouin traditions: temporary yet very functional.

The sun burns down on the provisional structure – the

whole scene is bathed in bright light. Spend a little longer looking at French photographer Yoann Cimier’s pictures, and the blazing heat will soon become tangible. You might feel the need to put on sunglasses and don a protective hat. Even better still, you might want to escape the sun by taking cover inside the shelter.

A vacation on the Tunisian island of Djerba set the stage for the project. From his hotel window, Cimier (born 1974) could look straight out and observe the beach-goers in the shimmering midday light. Families with carts, children, animals and mopeds had built temporary shelters, creating their own micro-cosmos, reminiscent of ancient Beduin traditions. Cimier was immediately struck by their architectural quality and the poetic atmosphere created by tarpaulins billowing in the wind. Explaining the impulse behind the work, Cimier says, “It seemed as if these nomad installations, simply planted in the sand, were just waiting to be photographed. The only thing left for me to do was to hit the trigger! The details of the project evolved step by step, as I looked around and found all kinds of possible perspectives: architectural, ethnographic, sociological. However, from an aesthetic point of view, I was destined to show beauty where others might not see it. Together with the photography, this anti-art is at the heart of the series.”

Once he got started, there was no stopping Cimier’s intense search for similar structures in this no man’s land.

He began collecting images of shelters like surreal treasures. Composition, distance and lighting form a leitmotif through the series, giving a uniformity to the images, as does the constant background of sand, sea and horizon. At the same time, each picture stands alone: a scene in white light, confirming the southern setting. To achieve all this, Cimier worked at midday, when the sun is at its zenith, so that the people and tents barely cast a shadow on the beach. Another stylistic element he chose was overexposure. Already in earlier projects, Cimier worked with Fuji films such as Velvia or Provia, known for their blue and green nuances. “Cool colours transcribe my personal way of looking at things.” Cimier has found his own style – which he considers one of the more important challenges. “I became a photographer because I can’t be an author, painter or musician,” Cimier explains. With his pictures, however, he is hoping to remind viewers of artists such as Paul Klee, August Macke, Louis Moilliet and Albert Marquet, who also worked in Tunisia, but at the beginning of the 20th century. The compositions capture the characteristics of the country: That sun!

That light! katrin iwanczuk loba

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1 Jameela Khan, Bemina, Srinagar, Kashmir, India, October 2014

2 Vilian Sousa da Silva, Taquari District, Rio Branco, Brazil, March 2015

4 J.B. Singh, Jawahar Nagar, Srinagar, Kashmir, India, October 2014

5 Florence Abraham, Igbogene, Bayelsa, Nigeria, November 2012

6 Anchalee Koyama, Taweewattana District, Bangkok, Thailand, November 2011

7 Victor and Hope America, Igbogene, Bayelsa, Nigeria, November 2012

9 Lucas Williams, Lawshe Plantation, South Carolina, USA, October 2015

10 João Pereira de Araújo, Taquari District, Rio Branco, Brazil, March 2015

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3 Jeff and Tracey Waters, Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey, Great Britain, February 2014

8 Francisca Chagas dos Santos, Taquari District, Rio Branco, Brazil, March 2015

2 017 Finalist

Gideon Mendel Drowning World The water has taken everything away from them – all that remains are their lives. As one element of his Drowning World long-term project, Gideon Mendel portrays victims of flooding all over the planet, hoping to turn the abstract expression ‘climate change’ into something more concrete.

Florence Abraham, is just one example. She had a

bakery with a dozen employees in Igbogene, Nigeria: until the flood of 2012 that is. Now nothing remains of her business. Even so, she still does not want to accept the money Gideon Mendel offers her – like he offers everyone – for permission to take her photograph. The only thing she wants is that the world be a witness to what has happened to her and to so many others. Mendel has been pursuing the Drowning World project since 2007, travelling all around the globe to areas that have suffered from flooding. He establishes contact with the survivors and then wades through the water with them to see what has been left behind of their homes. Mendel heads to these disaster zones while the water is still high in the streets and houses, where a ghost-like quiet reigns, during that surreal period between the time when the raging volumes of water invade an area and the time when the water levels drop, inevitably revealing the grime and destruction caused by the flood.

During the time when the water still stands silently around the buildings, covering everything in a sort of poetic morbidity, all the seeming social and cultural differences disappear, and what remains are people in a dystopian state of emergency. This is also why Mendel, who was born in Johannesburg in 1959 and who has lived in London since the early nineties, sees his ‘submerged portraits’ as a metaphor, both general yet also individualised, for climate change and its consequences.

The individual fates brought together globally, are symbolic of a reality that is threatening a growing number of people; the stories turn something as abstract as climate change into something tangible. Mendel is aware of the fact that floods – historically, universal terrifying experiences – have many causes; however, if we consider the intervention of humanity in nature plus the growing numbers of extreme weather events also caused by human impact, it is possible to imagine that these disasters will increase to the point of becoming mundane.

In the end we will be up to our necks in water – this is the imagery conveyed by the photographer’s choice of pictures for the competition.

Mendel works primarily with a Rolleiflex. Being a mechanical camera it is less sensitive to wet and humid conditions. Now and then he did drop it in the water, and one time he shot a role of film with a camera that was not quite dry: looking at the resulting, damaged pictures triggered off an additional chapter to his project, systematically searching for other pictures damaged by water that serve to also document memories that are lost as a result of a flood. olaf stefanus loba

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1 Men condemned by Kurdish militia for being IS fighters; Al-Malikiyah, Syria, March 2015

2 After bitter fighting, Kurds regain the control of Ayn al Arab; January 2015

3 Kurdish fighters belonging to the YPG-H in Ras al Ayn; Syria, March 2015

4 Demonstrations following the death of a young YPG-H fighter; Cizre, Turkey, July 2015

5 Monument showing the former Syrian ruler Hafis al-Assad; Al-Hakassah, July 2015

6 A Kurdish militia commander fighting against ISIS; Al-Hakassah province, July 2015

7 After attacks against the PKK, the city of Cizre is largely destroyed; Turkey 2016

8 Training of YPG-H militia in the Turkish border town of Nusaybin; March 2016

9 Kurdish refugees from Kobane in the Turkish city of Suruรง; November 2014

10 Yazidi refugees from northeast Syria try to get in touch via mobile phone

11 Yazidi corpses, victims of ISIS, close to Sinjar; Iraq, August 2014

1 2 Kurdish YPG-H fighters near Raqqa, once the stronghold of IS; August 2015

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2 017 Finalist

Emilien Urbano War of a Forgotten Nation French photographer Emilien Urbano has been documenting the struggle of the Kurds in Iraq, in Syria and in Turkey, since the summer of 2014. It is a fight on various fronts, with various goals, with changing opponents and changing allies – it is all about autonomy and putting down the so-called Islamic State.

Are they freedom fighters? Are they terrorists? Are

they welcome comrades-in-arms in the coalition against the so-called Islamic State? For Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, it is a very clear matter: when talking about protagonists such as the Kurdish PKK workers’ party and their youth organisation, the YPG-H, then they are terrorists, of course, and one has the right to confront them with violence. Since 2015, tensions have steadily escalated in the Kurdish majority provinces of southeast Anatolia; the city of Cizre close to the border with Syria has been largely destroyed as a result of the battles between the Turkish Army and the Kurds.

On the other side of the border, however, Kurdish militia bear the brunt of the fight against ISIS to a large degree, in particular the battle-hardened bands of Peshmerga coming from the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, but also members of the YPG-H. The international coalition trying to put down ISIS is supporting Kurdish units with arms and with money, which has contributed towards recapturing the city of Mosul from those calling for a Caliphate state. Appeals to Turkey to put an end to the attacks on Kurdish positions fall on deaf ears; from Ankara’s perspective, Kurdish activities contribute towards the destabilisation of Turkey, a country that has followed a policy of assimilation since its inception, and has not recognised the Kurds as an ethnic minority – on the other hand, it was under Erdogan’s government that, after a long battle, the Kurdish language is officially allowed to be spoken again.

The French photographer, Emilien Urbano, who is represented by the Myop Agency, calls the project he has been working on since 2014, War of a Forgotten Nation.

Kurds live in Turkey, in Iraq, in Syria and in Iran – historic settlement areas that were not taken into consideration during the Middle East nation-building efforts of the first half of the 20th century. Would it have ever been worthwhile establishing a Kurdish State? Especially as the settlement areas are in no way ethnically homogeneous? Urbano also speaks about the fact that, in part as a result of the current conflicts, the Kurds see themselves drawing closer than ever to their goal. In addition, they have, for example, earned a lot of recognition internationally for their defense of the Yazidi religious minority again the terror of ISIS. A modern constitutional state on the other hand, can not be established along ethnic lines. Accordingly, what Urbano shows us is ultimately a situation of tragic chaos destined to see further battles in the future: what today is fought for in the name of freedom, is eroded tomorrow in the name of die-hard conflict divisions. olaf stefanus loba

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1 “For me, this series is a kind of tribute to the past.”

2 “This project is the most personal of all my works.”

3 “The images are directly related to my grandparents.”

4 “I create something that can evoke a certain fantasy.”

5 “Most of my work dwells between documentary and fiction.”

6 “Where to draw the line between photography and fiction?“

7 “I wanted to get close to the culture without using language.”

8 “I wanted to give the viewers the chance to make their own associations.”

9 “I wanted to find a visual language that would be universal somehow.”

10 “My job was only to keep my eyes open and to notice things.”

11 “Everything was already there, the beauty, the tragedy, all in one.”

1 2 When I go again, I want to explore the mythology, maybe record songs.”

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2 017 Finalist

Viktoria Sorochinski Lands of No-Return Sorochinski initially returned to Ukraine in search of her family roots and the places of her childhood memories. However, the journey turned into a longterm portrait of a culture that is in the process of disappearing. The photographer has found a universal imagery to convey the corresponding feeling of loss.

A journey into the past. When Viktoria Sorochinski

first set off for Ukraine in 2005, she was on a very personal mission. After many years in different parts of the world – she had emigrated to Russia followed by Israel, then went to study in Canada and the USA – she was drawn to return to her roots. She had spent many happy hours with her grandparents in Tarasovka, a small village in the south of Ukraine, 90 kilometres away from Odessa on the Black Sea. “This project really started as a personal journey to the place of my childhood memories. My recollections of the times when my whole family went to spend the summer there are filled with happiness and light.” However, when the photographer reached the place where her grandparents are now buried, she was overwhelmed by an unexpected feeling of sadness. “It was so sad to see that the once vibrant life was no longer there, that it was mainly just old people left, and that they are slowly disappearing along with their homes.” This slowly fading culture gave Sorochinski the idea for a long-term project. “I feel that these people have had such a hard life, and they have so much history and tradition behind them that they simply must be remembered: their faces, their gazes, their hands, their homes and their life style. They have to be commemorated before they disappear forever.”

Sorochinki’s grandparents were not to be the main protagonists for the series, though they took on the symbolic role of representatives of a culture in decline, a lifestyle that from our perspective is old-fashioned, where the individual merges with his or her surroundings: farm houses containing everyday items that have seen endless years of use – tablecloths, curtains, covers and carpets with typical, east European patterns.

Nothing you see pretends to be anything more than it is. A museum for a spartan, rural lifestyle facing the onslaught of a consumer society.

By the manner in which Sorochinski captured her grandparents, portraying their neighbours and their surroundings, she was able to manifest a feeling of nostalgia. She found metaphors in symbols, mythology and folklore. During later trips to Ukraine, she no longer photographed exclusively in Tarasovka, but also in the rural areas around Kiev. Her portraits touch the viewer intimately, even if the individuals photographed are unknown. With Lands of No-Return, the photographer created a time capsule that dwells between documentation and fiction. In addition to the figures, the pictures capture a feeling of yearning. It is a universal form of communication that has no need for words. “I wanted to allow people to connect to it.” Carla S. Erdmann loba

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2 017 Finalist

Clara Chichin Under the Eyes that Few Minutes Exhaust Hauntingly beautiful, mysterious images in contrasting black and white – this is how Clara Chichin’s radically subjective photography can be characterised. I photograph, therefore I am. She establishes her presence in the world, with pictures so extremely grainy that all superfluous information seems to fade away.

Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí designed

a key scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film Spellbound.

It was one of the first Hollywood movies in which Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis played an important role, and the key scene was a dream sequence of the alleged psychiatrist Anthony Edwardes, played by Gregory Peck. Expressionist interplays of light and shadow fill the dream, enormous eyes glaring threateningly in the dark, a man without a face toys with a wheel, deformed in typical Dalí style – everything oriented, of course, towards the logic of Hitchcock’s script. The viewer may get a different impression from Clara Chichin’s Under the eyes that few minutes exhaust series: a wild dream that follows no apparent rules, a sequence of frozen images that is devoid of any inner logic.

A bicycle leans against a brightly lit wall, while someone climbs over it into the darkness and appears to partly vanish; monobloc chairs strewn around in an unknown location seem to move like ghosts through the night; two cut-off fish tails; a person who virtually becomes one with the forest where she is standing; trees time and again, little more than pure structures; people who become lost in the light or the dark. In fact, brightness and darkness seem to confront each other for dominance in Chichin’s contrast-rich, grainy black and white pictures. Born in Paris in 1985, the photographer explains that she often thinks of an expression found in the Journal by Alix Cléo Roubaud: “He said, ‘enhance the blacks’. There’s also a wish to transcend, to transfigure, to sublimate the images taken from life, those moments that are disappearing; these stylistic means allow me to filter reality.”

Clara Chichin studied Philosophy at the PanthéonSorbonne in Paris, and completed her Master in Art, Literature and Contemporary Thinking at Paris Diderot University, before studying Photography at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. While studying, one thing Chichin paid intense attention to was the correlations between literature and photography, combining text and images in her early work. “I am influenced by fragmentary writing, and I think, I hope, it is imbued with a literary dimension. Today I write less, but the titles always have what I hope is that literary dimension. They allow me to introduce the universe, a certain poetry.”

Chichin continues to apply a quasi literary approach to her photography today. “I assemble the fragments in a system of equivalence, little by little I compose an ensemble with repetitions, echoes, leitmotifs, as if I were writing a poem without a linear narrative, an imaginary voyage, a dream-like meandering.” bernd luxa loba

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2 017 Finalist

Vera Torok Accidentally on Purpose Shimmering lights, colourful shop windows, hurrying pedestrians, thick traffic: capturing as many facets as possible of everyday, urban life was the basic idea behind the series. However, in addition to patience and a fine sense for the moment, it took a fortuitous accident to produce the desired result.

Following an intention to experiment with the possibili-

ties of street photography, the London-based photographer Vera Torok has been exploring the metropolises of the world with a Leica M6 for the last four years. Acknowledging the great icons of the genres, she still seeks to create her own individual imagery, without forgetting the basic, classic picture elements. In early 2016 she had her ultimate breakthrough – and it was the choice of analogue film that was to play a significant role in how the Accidentally on Purpose series came about. It all began with a classic mistake so often made back in the day: Torok loaded an already used film into her camera and exposed it twice. Surprisingly enough, however, it was not a waste of effort, as the photographer was delighted to recognise in the pictures the fulfillment of a vision she had been trying to fulfil for a long time. “Every time I go out and photograph everyday life in an urban environment, I want to capture not just street scenes, but also the complexity of the whole, how people live urban life today, in a mixture of real and virtual worlds, constantly impacted by it all.”

Torok decided to turn the double exposure mishap, that had resulted in the realisation of a long-held idea, into a logical direction for her work; a mistake became a method. Following London, Hong Kong and Tokyo, she wants to travel to other cities, to continue capturing and giving expression to everyday life in each of them.

The photographer is not alone in this endeavour, as she travels with Robert Pap, with whom she founded the Gravitatephotos collective. They now work together on series, an approach that sometimes goes as far as exchanging used rolls of film – with the outcome reflecting their close collaboration. Chance played a decisive role in Accidentally on Purpose, but in the meantime Torok has developed a sense and ability for recognising which images will serve well as double exposures – even if the yield is limited to one picture per film.

Torok was born in Budapest in 1981, and began taking pictures with her father’s camera over twenty years ago; the passion to dedicate herself fully to photography, however, only developed in recent years after studying Communication Sciences and Economy. “The magic happens inside the camera,” is how Torok sees the process; but reflective experience and the consistent application of an idea until these unusual urban impression can make it onto film is also fundamental. Any kind of post production, however, is out of the question as far as the photographer is concerned. Torok’s greatest wish for Gravitatephotos is the publication of Accidentally on Purpose in book form. ULRICH RÜTER loba

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1 “One of the first photos from the first day I started doing this project.”

2 “I was shocked when I saw these ‘rings’.

Then I learned it was a medical therapy.”

3 “I like the way this photo is divided into two parts, left and right.”

4 “Joking around. The emotions in this picture are very bright and clear.”

5 “This photo makes you think – about the girl, about the atmosphere.”

6 “The girl didn’t feel well after drinking a large amount of alcohol.”

7 “She couldn’t dance very well, so she danced while drunk.”

8 “This photo is used everywhere when people write about the series.”

9 “An apparently unobserved moment while changing clothes before a show.”

10 “When you look at this photo you want to help this girl straight away.”

11 “Two girls are preparing for the show and a third one is speaking on the phone.”

1 2 “A well deserved time to relax with a cigarette and rest weary legs.”

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2 017 Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer

Sergey Melnitchenko Behind the Scenes It would be hard to get any closer than the Ukrainian, Sergey Melnitchenko, got to his protagonists: he himself worked as a dancer in the Chinese dance club where his series about the joys and sufferings of backstage life was taken.

Up close and personal, he takes a look behind the scenes of the cheap entertainment business.

Observations beyond the spotlights. Glitzy, sequined

outfits, slinky corsets and bruises are visible during the performance as much as backstage. Beyond the view of the public, people laugh with abandon, cry uninhibitedly, smoke nervously, argue passionately and make telephone calls on the side. There is not much oxygen and many are out of breath. Sergey Melnitchenko has seen it all, with and without his camera in hand. He has worked as a dancer for longer than he has been a photographer, and his award-winning Behind the Scenes series is the result of his own observations and experiences. He got up close and personal with the colleagues, transvestites and dancers with whom he shared daily life. “In the spring of 2016, we performed in a Chinese club, which was more like a huge bar with a stage, because none of the patrons were dancing there. That’s where the idea for the series arose.” Melnitchenko had already worked in a number of clubs, but in this one, in the Chinese metropolis of Dongguan with over 11 million inhabitants, he became particularly aware of the atmosphere. Dongguan is to the east of the Pearl River, a good 50 kilometres from China’s third largest city, Guangzhou. Because of its many brothels, the city is considered the country’s sex capital.

What did Melnitchenko want to show with the series?

“This is the reverse, the invisible side of the club, the atmosphere, which I became a part of. Here, behind the scenes there is more burlesque than on the stage; the concentration of sexual fluids is more powerful than oxygen. There’s no falsehood – it’s not a scene, it’s their everyday life, our life, or rather mine.” His photos speak of the ensemble’s mutual support, of the sorrows and joys, the emergencies and the fun at work. With his mixture of documentary and reportage, the photographer finds a rather cinematic form of expression; and he is not just up close to the protagonists, he’s right among them. The available light, from warm orange to cool blue, already turns the scenario into a set. With sensitivity, Melnitchenko records the deep emotions and the typical movements of his colleagues. The concentrated tension creates a screen, that the photographer places his very human images on. The viewer immerges into a mostly hidden world, located beyond the dance floor.

Born in Mykolayiv, Ukraine in 1991, the dancer began taking photographs eight years ago. “I first worked with with nude art and staged photography. In China I’ve started taking photos on the streets with my mobile phone, and photos of my daily life with an instant camera. The Behind the Scenes series was somethig really new for me.” Carla Susanne Erdmann loba

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The Winners 1980 – 2016 1980

Floris Bergkamp | NED

1981

Björn Larsson | SWE

Dominic Nahr | CHE | Newcomer

1982

Wendy Watriss | USA

2010

1983

Neil McGahee | USA

Jens Olof Lasthein | SWE

1984

Stormi Greener | USA

20 1 1

1985

Sebastião Salgado | BRA

1986

David C. Turnley | USA

2012

1987

Jeff Share | USA

Piotr Zbierski | POL | Newcomer

1988

Chris Steele-Perkins | GBR

2013

1989

Charles Mason | USA

Evgenia Arbugaeva | RUS Ciril Jazbec | SLO | Newcomer

1990

Raphael Gaillarde | FRA

2014

1991

Barry Lewis | GBR

Martin Kollar | SVK

1992

Sebastião Salgado | BRA

2015

1993*

Eugene Richards | USA

Wiktoria Wojciechowska | POL | Newcomer

1995

Gianni Berengo-Gardin | ITA

2016

Scarlett Coten | FRA

1996

Larry Towell | CAN

1997

Jane Evelyn Atwood | USA

1998

Fabio Ponzio | ITA

1999

Claudine Doury | FRA

2000

Luc Delahaye | FRA

2001

Bertrand Meunier | FRA

2002

Narelle Autio | AUS

2003

Andrea Hoyer | USA

2004

Peter Granser | GER

2005

Guy Tillim | RSA

2006

Tomás Munita | CHI

2007

Julio Bittencourt | BRA

2008

Lucia Nimcova | SVK

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2009

Mikhael Subotzky | RSA

Andy Spyra | GER | Newcomer

Jan Grarup | DEN Jing Huang | CHN | Newcomer

Frank Hallam Day | USA

Alejandro Cegarra | VEN | Newcomer

JH Engström | SWE

Clémentine Schneidermann | FRA | Newcomer *Only one competition was held 1993/94.

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