The 10 Finalists of the 10th international KAUNAS PHOTO STAR Award revealed

In 2020, the 17th edition of KAUNAS PHOTO festival was planned to celebrate the periphery, the province, the outback, l'arrière-pays. The COVID-19 pandemic and the fight against it imposed new rules and conceptions, and KAUNAS PHOTO festival invited photographers to present works to KAUNAS PHOTO STAR 2020 competition on the topic Peripheral Visions”, aiming to look at what is on the margin, just across the window or the border that we can or cannot cross, to discover the spaces, places, lands, areas that usually were in the periphery of the vision. In 2020, the festival invites to rethink what became important, what was less so, what was taken for granted or simply undermined until now.

The traditional, already the 10th KAUNAS PHOTO STAR 2020 contest has attracted the interest of photographers both in Lithuania and around the world. 170 series by photographers from 38 countries were submitted to the contest. There were works presented from remote countries - Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Brazil, Chile. The most active participants in the contest were photographers from Poland (11 series), Russia (12 series), United Kingdom (13 series), USA (16 series), Germany and Italy (18 series each), and what is most gratifying to the organizers - Lithuania photographers, who submitted 19 series to the contest. This is the first time in a decade of the history of KAUNAS PHOTO STAR, that Lithuanian photographers have formed the largest group of participants.

The grand prize of the contest is a solo exhibition at Kaunas Photography Gallery during KAUNAS PHOTO festival and a monetary prize of 2500 EUR. Exhibitions of all other finalists will be displayed in galleries, museums and open-air spaces of Kaunas.

From July 30 to August 1 all entries were reviewed and evaluated by an international Jury panel of photography experts:

Fred Boucher - Photaumnales festival and Usimage Biennale director (France)
Enrico Stefanelli - PhotoLux festival director (Italy)
Gintaras Česonis - Kaunas Photography Gallery leader (Lithuania)
Kristine Kern - Fotografisk Center leader (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kristina Juraitė - KAUNAS PHOTO co-founder, professor at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania)
Julia Durkin - Auckland Festival of Photography director (New Zealand)
Donatas Stankevičius - KAUNAS PHOTO and Kaunas Photography Gallery curator (Lithuania)
Adrian Wykrota - Pix.House gallery curator (Poland)
Mindaugas Kavaliauskas - KAUNAS PHOTO founder, curator (Lithuania)

Following the experts' votes on all works submitted to the competition in the LensCulture system, on August 4, 2020, the joint commission of the festival KAUNAS PHOTO and Kaunas Photography Gallery gathered for a virtual meeting, the purpose of which was to approve the list of the finalists. Although the plan was to select eight finalists, due to the very dense vicinity of the shortlist (7-12th places were shared by five series, scoring 29 expert points each), the commission decided to expand the list of finalists to top ten. The three finalists were selected on the basis of the points awarded by the members of the commission in the voting system.

The ten KAUNAS PHOTO STAR Award 2020 Finalists are:

Chiara Panariti & Gianfranco Ferraro (Italy) Cronostasi
Michał Adamski (Poland) I dyed my hair again
Arne Piepke (Germany) Anecdotes from an unfamiliar Land
Hannes Jung (Germany) The Wolf Is Present
Dovilė Dagienė (Lithuania) Plant Memory / Wooden Synagogues
Bruno Alencastro (Brazil) Obs-cu-ra
Mikhail Lebedev (Russia) Restaurateurs by chance
Guillem Vidal (Spain) Forgotten playground
Lina Margaitytė & Marius Krivičius (Lithuania) Temporarily Open
Dillon Marsh (South Africa) Diamonds Aren't Forever

At the end of the week, this commission will meet again, but with a different purpose - to elect the Winner of KAUNAS PHOTO STAR 2020. This will be done by analyzing the photographic series of the finalists presented in wide selections and high-resolution files.

KAUNAS PHOTO STAR Finalists' exhibition openings will take place in Kaunas on September 3, 2020. The winner will be announced on the same day, September 3, when the opening series of KAUNAS PHOTO STAR Finalists' exhibition will culminate at the door of Kaunas Photography Gallery.

Founded in 2004 by Mindaugas Kavaliauskas, KAUNAS PHOTO aims to be the stage for the future stars of photography. Being a part of Photo Festival Union and Festivals Of Light Organization, KAUNAS PHOTO festival is the longest-running photographic festival in the Baltic states is a platform for dialogue around contemporary photographic creation between North and South, East and West.

NGO Šviesos raštas is the organizer of KAUNAS PHOTO festival.

Michael Joseph: Lost & Found

By Michael Joseph

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 144 pages

Lost & Found documents a contemporary American subculture of young Travelers through raw, striking portraiture and intimate storytelling. These Travelers abandon home to move around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping in a nomadic, transient existence outside of mainstream society. Along their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends.

The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence. The black and white portraits are made in public, on the street, using natural light. Individual stories, as a collection, form a greater narrative. Over ten years in the making, Joseph’s portraits reveal the human condition. They capture courage, tenderness, and determination in his subjects that have been largely ignored and unseen.

An incredible book that we highly recommend! All About Photo

All About Michael Joseph

Nick Brandt: Sink / Rise, The Day May Break: Chapter Three

By Nick Brandt

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2024 | 120 pages

Through his widely acclaimed work, English photographer Nick Brandt (1964) addresses pressing environmental issues, consistently highlighting mankind’s impact upon the natural world. His work is truly a fusion of artistry and activism, and he is best known for capturing the majestic landscapes of Africa as well as intimate portraits of its wildlife. Sink / Rise is the third chapter of The Day May Break, an ongoing global series portraying ecological degradation and destruction. This chapter adopts a slightly different approach than its predecessors: taking humans, rather than animals or landscapes, as his subjects. Sink / Rise focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by rising oceans from climate change. The people in these photos, photographed underwater in the ocean off the coast of the Fijian islands, are local representatives of the many people whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises. In Brandt’s images, the Islanders sit down at tables, stand on chairs and embrace―all the while, their pinched expressions reveal the desperation of their asphyxiating condition.

All About Nick Brandt

Lisa McCord: Rotan Switch

By Lisa McCord:

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 204 pages

Rotan Switch is the first monograph by Lisa McCord, documenting life on her grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark—the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it hasn’t been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of race and injustice. Collected over the last forty-four years, these images and stories are a reflection on the people and places that have taught McCord the meaning of the word home. It is also a self-exploration into her inherently complicated role in this community as both the photographer and the granddaughter of the farm owner.
This publication is a long-term project, constructed from McCord's analog photographs, family snapshots and ephemera. Including, monochrome photographs, color polaroids, and recipes.

Christer Strömholm

By Christer Strömholm

Publisher : Dewi Lewis Publishing

2024 | 296 pages

Christer Strömholm is recognised as one of the major figures of 20th century European photography. Strömholm captured his surroundings in black‐and‐white images that display his integrity, understated humour and a highly personal aesthetic. With an unmistakable sensitivity to human suffering, based on his personal experience, he took photography in a new direction. Sean O’Hagan, writing in The Guardian, has described him “as the father of Swedish photography both for his abiding influence and for his role as a teacher.”

The 10 Finalists of the 10th international KAUNAS PHOTO STAR Award revealed

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