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The winner of the competition is Nahid Rezashateri for her project “The Wind Will Carry Us”. The series combines analog and archival photography with elements of graphics and collage with plant motifs. Her works are tribute to the artistic group, which she was part of in her youth. Nahid travels back in memories, recreating the story, faces, space and moments that have taken a new form in her thoughts, that have become distant with time. The title “Wind” is a symbol of her growth and constant changes that occured in her life.
Second place went to Ewa Pawlus and her “Memory”, a series of eight black and white photographs in traditional technique. Through the variety of manipulations, experiments and intentional degradation of photosensitive materials she tried to illustrate the way human memory functions, including all the processes which take place in the human brain. Vestigial images, disintegration and degradation, suppression, mind gaps filled with illusions, but also the way our memories are personalised and idealised have become the subject of her interest.
Third place went to Diana Pankova for her project “Tapestries of Reality”. The series was shot with the simplest pinhole cameras, made of drink cans. The photo paper is manually woven into a kind of “carpets”. They are developed and fixed with the classical paper developing kit. It requires sincere dedication, patience, and attention to the entire creative process.
Honorable mentions:
- Giuseppe Sannino for “Reminiscence”, the project taken with 35mm film and wet plate collodion process. Series describe duality of visions, splt of the family and nationality division. He also compiled the past with the present, showing the similarities between the photographs taken by him and the archival photographs of his family.
- Basia Budniak for “Black heart” made in Solargraphy technique. Artist directly refers
to the greatest force of nature, the Sun. Photosensitivity of the hidden material inside each can is a symbol of the processes taking place in us - constant changes and uncertainty. The images, not preserved all the time, are transformed. The series is a photo-documentation of this process.
- Joanna Chudy for “The oblivion. Hidden identity” made in black and white, accompanied by publication and multimedia activity. The title refers to memory loss in relation to events. It’s also a pretext for recalling archival images. It focuses on a single person - a woman who discovers the history of her identity, she discovers herself.
- Magdalena Warzecha for "Nature’s intimacy" made in the heliogravure technique. It is a series of photographs of plants in various stages of growth. Blooming, drying out or dying out into abstract forms. Using this technique is an escape from the digitization of the present world and a return to the historical duplication of photography focused on its formal values.
Congratulations to all winners!