2024 Documentary photography - Finalists and Winners
1. Patryk Jaracz (POL) - WINNERS
\"Impact of war\" project is examination of consequences of war in Ukraine through visual documentation of its impact. War turned peaceful villages and cities into battlefields where homes, schools and cultural heritage sites are destroyed. Millions of people were forced to flee while hundreds of thousands have been injured or killed. While the smoke and tears can be seen in the moment, the trauma will be carried long into the future. Equally while the flames are burning Ukrainian wheat fields it will also result in millions starving tens of thousands kilometres away in Africa and Middle East.
2. Roger Grasas (SPN) - WINNERS
Named after the expression that refers to \'The Promised Land\', \"Ha Aretz\" is a visual reinterpretation of the biblical landscapes, photographed today in the context of a globalized and capitalist world, marked by war and alienation. Carried out between 2010-20 around the states that make up the historic Holy Land (Egypt,Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria) the work is a reflection on the faith\'s role, conceptualized with the goal of documenting the precise locations where –according to archaeologists and biblical historians– the most famous events of the sacred scriptures took place.
3. Berk Ä°ÅŸeri (TR) - WINNERS
The night of the earthquake, I celebrated my birthday with my friends and woke up late. I don\'t remember receiving so many messages on my phone before. I couldn\'t understand what exactly was going on, so I turned on the news. There was a big earthquake, but I couldn\'t understand what kind of disaster it was. I was confused about whether to go or not.
Julia Kochetova (Ukraine) - HONORABLE MENTION
The ground is flying into my face – a howitzer is firing and smashing a sunflower field.Mortars are launching and mines are falling on the Bakhmut outskirts all night long.I keep asking myself – what the hell am I doing here?Could I choose something else?Not really.I’m not a war photographer, it’s a war happening in my country.And I’m holding my camera and trying to hide how shaky and nervous my hands are.War is personal.War has a face.And it’s mine.
Anna Surinyach (Spain) - FINALISTS
An average of nine people have died every day since 2014 trying to reach Europe by sea. The numbers are higher than in most active wars, but the social alarm is not the same despite the fact that these deaths occur at the gates of Europe.Sea of ​​Mourning is the result of years of work documenting the different migratory routes to Europe through the sea. The project combines journalistic investigation of some shipwrecks with submerged images of the portraits that the families use to try to obtain some type of information.
Carlos Folgoso Sueiro (Spain) - FINALISTS
Tony used to arrive home with nuts saying that his girlfriend, Rosemary, presented them to him. Adolf and Raúl\'s home was fired while they were inside. Maria lost her only son in his fifties. Aceredo town came to light after being buried underwater for over 30 years. All these narratives come from rural Galicia, one of the most economically deprived regions in Spain. In this area, issues such as alcoholism, emigration, poverty, unemployment, disputes among neighbors over communal land, forest fires, and water scarcity resulting from climate change have become entrenched problems.
Axel Javier Sulzbacher (DE) - FINALISTS
The avocado has caused a hype rarely seen in recent decades. The burden of the rising demand lies mainly on the Mexican state of Michoacan. There, forests are being illegally cleared by fire to plant avocado plantations. The high international demand has led to more extensive and numerous plantations. Over 300,000 jobs directly or indirectly depend on the production and trade of avocados in the region, which generates annual revenues of $2.5 billion. In 2021 Michoacán alone produced some 1.8 million tons of the green fruit.In the ongoing drug war, the cartels have become drawn to the revenue.
Gabriele Cecconi (ITL) - FINALISTS
This visual exploration is a journey to another planet.Tiàwùk is a small planet compared to the earth and the environmental conditions are extreme but suitable for the adaptation of the human life.Strained between its excesses and contradictions,it enjoys enormous wealth and has developed a society in which a materialism of dystopian levels blends with Islamic tradition unveiling the construction of a distorted view of reality.The work is a visual research of the relationship between psyche and the environment to see how cultural conditioning affects the way we relate to the external world.
Pierpaolo Mittica (ITL) - FINALISTS
AND THEN THE WINTER CAME.On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting a full-scale war. In recent months Russia has started to hit power plants to put the population in the dark and cold during the harsh Ukrainian winter. More than half of the country currently lives without electricity, water and heating. Now winter has arrived, where temperatures drop as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. After almost a year, the situation in Ukraine is extremely dramatic and a particularly complicated and difficult winter for the Ukrainian population is in sight.
Cecilia Frollano (ITL) - FINALISTS
Two years ago Russia invaded Ukraine. The war, which sowed and continues to sow death and destruction in Ukraine, also lead to a drastic change in Russian civil society. While there is no hard data, it is estimated that more than one million Russians have left the country without going back.Between April and September 2023, I traveled through Italy, Germany, Serbia, Georgia, and Armenia to meet young Russian activists and dissidents who took the decision to leave their country to preserve their freedom and safety.Most of them got arrested during the protests against the war.
