Following a successful submission process with over 140 applications from Austria and the UK we are pleased to announce the winners of the second Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize:
UK Winner: Mike Ying
Austrian Winner: Lea Abendstein
For our second edition of the prize we invited submissions by emerging photographers on the theme of ‘Life in 2020’. Because of the Covid-19-pandemic we are confronted with a new way of life and new realities. Our everyday life, our work life, our relationships, our leisure activities had to be adapted to a life in lockdown and to social distancing. With this year’s call we wanted to capture these ground breaking changes and challenging times.
Mike Ying’s dynamic portraits convey the situation and difficulties of dancers out of work during the Covid-19 lockdown, situated not in studios but displaced at bus stops and London underground walkways. A love of life and the joy of performance in constantly changing, colourful environments and a different pictorial design in each work reveal a vivid image of its protagonists. The subjects of Ying’s portraits speak with their gaze and the power of body language.
Lea Abendstein's beautiful, multi-layered collages give us a sense of the interior experience of the pandemic lockdown, and its impact on mental health, familial structures and everyday life. Her collages oscilate between the feelings of life in a world before and after the pandemic. Powerful imagery and semantic subtlety are combined skillfully in one work.
The Jury would also like to highly commend:
Les Monaghan (UK) for his strong social-documentary portrayals of people’s responses to the Covid crisis, and the sense of how it is impacting on their lives. They are as much social studies as staged portraits giving a voice to underrepresented people visibly still caught in the shock of the pandemic.
Maximilian Schneller (AT) who, like Wolf Suschitzky, works with black and white street photography and creates fresh, playful portrayals of daily life under Covid. His images of the effects of the pandemic combine thoughtfulness with irony and a dose of surrealism.
Shortlist
Bex Day (UK)
Maisie Hill (UK)
Michaela Nagyidaiova (UK)
Anny Wass (AT)
Katharina Bayer (AT)
Maurizio Cirillo (AT)
Virtual Exhibition: Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize
Until it is possible for us to present the winning & shortlisted photographers in a dedicated in-house exhibition we invite you to visit our online exhibition featuring a selection of works.
Visit the exhibition HERE.
For more info about the open call click here
