Budapest International Foto Awards announces the winners of 2020
Photographer of Year: Eduardo Lopez Moreno, Kenya. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The winners of the Budapest International Foto Awards 2020 edition have been announced. Even though this year was a tumultuous one, the jury panel has seen exceptional creativity and a truly stunning representation of personal stories. Through their work, the photography community shows the power of images in shaping how we see the world. BIFA is once again proud to support and honour these photographers who have such important stories to share through their images, giving us a window to the world through their lenses.
Photographer of the Year, Eduardo Lopez Moreno let viewers take a glimpse into a small town in Mexico where a clash between two drug gangs resulted in an accidental murder. In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time - Accidental Victim of Drug Gangs is the photograph series that grasps the shocking fact that just sitting on a bench peacefully can be dangerous in some areas of the world.
Discovery of Year: Sabrina Komár, Hungary. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
Sabrina Komár's Monologue series captures the inner conflicts that everyone has within themselves: "My monologue seems to have a lot of characters, and yet it doesn’t. Because it's all me, and yet it's not. I am in constant conflict and struggle with myself. But which character is the real one, where am I, which one am I? I am looking for the answer to this with my cyanotypes."
Category Winners of BIFA 2020
Professional Photography
1st place 2020 Advertising - Swoonluxe Sway With Me! by Amyn Nasser, Canada. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
1st place Architecture: Not an Exit by Austin Irving, United States. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
NOT AN EXIT proposes a closer examination of doorways and hallways, liminal spaces intended for movement that somehow appear impassable. Void of cultural signifiers, belonging to no specific place or location, a universality of line and form reoccurs from image to image, offering a deeper assessment of the formal elements that make up the spaces we routinely pass through and sometimes never truly see. We are going somewhere and yet—there seems to be no way out.
Born and raised in New York City, Austin Irving is a visual artist who works with large format analog photography. Irving graduated with a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at TISCH School Of The Arts at New York University in 2006. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Hong Kong, India, Germany, Paris, and across The United States. Her images have been reviewed and featured in The LA Times, Wired, Slate, Architectural Digest, Art Ltd., Artillery, TimeOut NY, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, Frontrunner, Artsy, Yatzer, and Artweek LA.
1st place 2020 Book: Mélaina Cholé by Cristiano Volk, Italy.
Mélaina Cholé, from Ancient Greek "melas" (black), and "kholé" (bile), is a photographic exploration of humoral theory conceived by Hippocrates. This theory explained physical and psychological health or illness in terms of the state of balance or imbalance of various bodily fluids. According to Hippocrates (5th century bce), health was a function of the proper balance of four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Volk, in particular, focuses on black bile, described as a cold and dry fluid, generated by the archetype of the earth.
Cristiano Volk is an Italian photographer who lives and works in a small town called Staranzano in northeastern Italy. After a short period of study at the Spazio Labo’ in Bologna, he worked with artists such as Massimo Mastrorillo at the D.O.O.R. Academy and Federico Clavarino. In April 2019 his first book Sinking Stone was published by Witty Books and, at the end of the same year, it was selected by the American Suburb X magazine among the best photographic books of 2019. The following year his second book Me?laina Cholé was published by the American publishing house Yoffy Press.
1st plae 2020 Editorial: In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time - Accidental Victim of Drug Gangs by Eduardo Lopez Moreno, Kenya.
A man like anyone else, good, drunkard, according to his wife, was sitting on a bench in the main square of his town in the wrong place at the wrong time, when two rival drug gangs confronted each other, taking by accident his life.This happened in a remote rural area in the central part of Mexico, Jalisco State. A place where traditions from a century ago are preserved, as it is the case with this burial documented by several pictures throughout the process in the family home of the deceased.Traditions in the most remote areas refuse to disappear altogether, undergoing minor changes.
I like to travel and encounter the world with its streets and its people, but the part that corresponds to my interest, my vision and philosophy of life. My photos are a look at someone’s world, a journey into their space and their life; an attempt to build a story without affection, as part of a social commitment.I present different visual stories that intersect in the streets and in their plurality create a certain connection; a new sense. These images can be regard, a hand, a detail or a full scene; a fixed temporality that captures movement. A piece of something that states a vaster spac
1st place 2020 Events: Ode to The Fighter by Daniel Antalfi, Austria. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
Muay Thai is one of the most brutal combat sports of the world.The series of “Ode to the fighter” is made from a first-row audience perspective, investigating the human relations around the ring. Fighters towards their masters and managers, and naturally against each other.If you look close enough, you might be able to feel the overflowing smell of the mixture of tiger balm and human sweat, and listen how the crowd is getting louder with every smash of flesh and bones, as the voice of the Javanese clarinet is getting more intense with each and every round.
1st place 2020 Fine Art: Ke Sale Teng by Lebohang Kganye, South Africa. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
Ke sale teng confronts how family photo albums no longer have a fixed narrative but instead open us to reinterpret our past. Sometimes we rely on the family photo album as a way to understand what family is meant to be. What we often land up with is a grouping of images that have been constructed, and perhaps do not account at all for the histories and memories that are connected with that album.
Although primarily a photographer, Lebohang Kganye often incorporates her interest in sculpture, performance, installation and film in her work. She has participated in major exhibitions locally and internationally, including Give me Yesterday, The Prada Foundation, Milan (2017), Africa is No Island, MACAAL, Marrakesh (2018), Tell Freedom, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2018), Recent Histories, an Arthur Walter collection travelling exhibition (2016 - Ongoing), Not the Usual Suspects, Iziko National Gallery Cape Town (2019) or Alpha Crucis, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2020).
1st place 2020 Nature: How We Bleed The Earth, Our Guilt and Shame by Torleif Lie, Norway. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
A series of images portraying the impact of humankind's destructive industrial practices on the natural environment. The images portray the terrible beauty of mining’s toxic impact on the land, whilst serving as a reminder of man’s folly.The Rio Tinto river flows to the gulf of Cadiz carrying high acidity levels and heavy metals, in effect making this an environment disaster, a toxic reminder of human’s ability to irreversibly destroy the landscape in the name of corporate profits, a legacy of greed for future generations.
Torleif Lie is an award winning fine art photographer based in Stavanger, Norway. His work captures not only the beauty of the natural world, but also the essence of a particular place. On the surface of his images the viewer can perhaps see an environmental message, or a celebration of the beauty of the natural world, but in the depth of his photographs one can sense a homage to the cultures that have inhabited these extraordinary locations for millenniums, the true essence of what is in front of us with its ancient resilience and beauty.
1st place 2020 People: Seven by Wei Ding, United States. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
According to the classic scripts of Chinese medicine, the 7 emotions —ecstasy, fury, worry, reverie, grief, terror, and shock — are causes of chaos. If left untamed, they can disrupt the heart, intestines, and the Qi of a balanced body. “7” is a self-portrait photography series by Chinese American photographer Wei Ding. The series speaks about the inner chaos and the loss of identity from his life-long experience of displacement as an immigrant. How does it FEEL to blend in everywhere but not belong anywhere? The series unpacks the complexity of answering this core question.
1st Place 2020 Portfolio: A Series of Unfortunate Fortunate Events by Lara Alcantara. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
I have started shooting my everyday because as a creative, if I am not working I slowly shutdown. I made work out of frustration and fear. Using it to my advantage as therapy.I wanted to clear the fear as much as I could by making fun, sarcastic images that would create a place of comfort and understanding to my audience. I wanted to take them away from the news and bring them into my wonderous world.I have been working on self portraits for quite some time. Now more than ever I had myself. A way to live outside this world of confinement, fear an uncertainty.
Science: XYZ. © 2020 Budapest Foto Awards
Amateur/Student Photography
• Advertising - Stay Safe by Cemal Samli
• Architecture: U-Bahn by Fabio Galvez
• Book: The World Ain't Enough... by Oliver Raschka
• Editorial: Hong Kong Protests by Dominic Chiu
• Events: The Circle of Life by Marco Marcone
• Fine Art: Monologue by Sabrina Komár
• Nature: White Horses: Covid Dreams by Mieke Douglas
• People: Son of Nature by Mea Baráth
• Portfolio: Be A Chilean Lumberjack by Simone Francescangeli
• Science: Microcosmic Portraits of The Little Earthlings by Irina Petrova.
BIFA’s mission is to promote the work of professional and emerging international photographers to the fast-growing artistic community of Budapest and across the world, putting them in the spotlight and providing them with a great platform to showcase their work.
The full list of 1st and 2nd place Category Winners, and Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in each of the competition’s categories, and Honorable Mentions from across both professional and amateur entries can be viewed on the BIFA website Winners Page.