JH Engström is honoured with the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2015 with his project titled « Tout Va Bien » and will receive a cash prize of 25,000 euros and a Leica M camera and lens.
« Tout Va Bien » does not handle a concrete subject in the traditional sense. The Swedish photographer JH Engström intends his project to be seen much more as visual poetry – a photographic narrative with strong autobiographical elements. Despite this, it does not exclusively depict aspects of his own life. „Tout Va Bien“ is a sequence of widely differing images. The winning series includes both portraits and landscapes, as well as bizarre snapshots like the photograph of the birth of his twins. The photographer also switches between exposures in black and white and colour. Engström plays with contrasts and leaves it to viewers to find their own ways of reading and interpreting each picture.
The Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award, first presented in 2009, has been won by Wiktoria Wojciechowska for her series « Short Flashes ». She receives a prize of 5,000 euros and a Leica M camera and lens.
In her winning series, the Polish photographer Wiktoria Wojciechowska focuses on fleeting moments of everyday life in China. Over a period of several months, she portrayed Chinese cyclists pedalling their damp ways through the incessant rain of the sprawling megacities of Beijing and Hangzhou. The project was shot as the streets were almost flooded in the typhoon season of 2013 and 2014. Alone, and without speaking a word of Chinese, the young photographer explored this new terrain without any means of communicating with the people around her. She identified with and felt the anonymity of the nameless cyclists and scooter riders who whizzed past her on the streets. This was the source of her idea for giving these people an identity – picking them out from the masses – and preserving them in captured instants. Her snapshot-like images tell the truth of genuine moments. Because, in contrast to posed and tightly controlled portraits, these spontaneous and unnoticed exposures show the reality and authenticity that exists in ingrained behavioural patterns.
EVENT
Screening Théâtre Antique of Rencontres d’Arles
On July 8, 2015 at 10pm
Prix Leica Oskar Barnack & Leica Newcommer Award 2015
Prix Découverte des Rencontres d’Arles 2015
Also :
Dear Human by Stéphane Breton
LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles 2015
Entrance : 13€
Ticketing
Booksigning
« Tout va Bien » by JH Engström
Edited by Aperture
On July 9th 5pm – 7pm
Espace Van Gogh
Stand Leica
13200 Arles
France
http://www.leica-camera.com
