Davide Monteleone’s series Spasibo, the fourth winner of the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award, will be on display from May 24th to June 21st at the Studio Museo Francesco Messina in Milan.
The theme proposed to photographers for this fourth edition was Chechnya, a country torn by extreme violence and still the theatre of tremendous human misery, even after two decades of murderous conflict. The Italian photographer Davide Monteleone has chosen to illustrate the threat to Chechen identity concealed beneath the appearance of calm and prosperity adroitly maintained by the autocratic regime of Ramzan Kadyrov. He spent the period from December 2012 to April 2013 in the country.
Spasibo was published by the Editions Kehrer(164 pages, 58€)
Created in 2009, the purpose of the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award is to grant EUR 50,000 in funding for a photo-reportage carried out over a period of several months on a specific, topical subject.
With the profession in the grips of an unprecedented financing crisis, and the risks taken by freelance photographers the subject of much debate, the Carmignac Gestion Foundation wished to sponsor the work of photojournalists. Their dedication to depict the truth requires knowledge of the country and experience of the terrain in order to represent the situation in all its complexity. The Carmignac Foundation promotes the award via an exhibition and the publication of a monograph. It also purchases four of the photographs included in the report.
