Andrei Stenin Press Photo Contest announces 2020 shortlist

The Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest, announces that the contest's international jury of leading photography experts, has selected the best entries from over 5,000 submissions. Young photojournalists from 75 countries competed in the contest this year.

The shortlist includes photographers from 19 countries - Russia, the US, France, India, Italy, Spain, Iran, Bangladesh, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Belarus, South Africa, China, and - for the first time - the UK, Austria, Argentina, Brazil and Haiti.

This year's entries are distinguished by the painterly quality of extreme visual beauty. Through its code, young photojournalists have tried to express and understand the most pressing problems of our time - from social and political clashes to environmental issues. They believe beauty to have a great humanistic influence that can save the world.

Grazing smoke, harvesting fear © Luis Tato, Spain

Distorted horizons © Younes Hani Someeh Soflaei, Iran

Regarding the 2020 winners, the curator of the Andrei Stenin Contest and head of Rossiya Segodnya's visual projects, Oksana Oleinik, noted: “The philosophy of the noosphere and problems with the oceans, the revival of exotic jobs in modern India and the preservation of the ecological balance in Congo, the outbreaks of the Ebola virus on the African continent and the religious traditions of small nations - these are just some of the subjects that our shortlisted photojournalists have depicted. In young photojournalism there is no concept of a “closed” or “passing” subject. Our contestants suggest that in today's world there is no separate disaster or well-being, one is connected with the other. Viewers cannot help but be surprised and amazed by how skillfully and accurately they reveal these links.”

The face of bauxite mining - the source of our aluminum © Kevin Krautgartner, Germany

The Grand Prix and category winners will be announced in September on stenincontest.ru, stenincontest.com.

Contest organizers also plan to launch the traditional winners' road show at various world cities through the end of the year.

About the contest
The Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest, organized by Rossiya Segodnya under the patronage of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, aims to support young photographers and draw public attention to the challenges of photojournalism today. It is a platform for young photographers - talented and sensitive individuals open to all things new - to highlight people and events near us.

Fishing at Jamuna © Abdul Momin, Bangladesh

Gilindire Cave - single breath © Sebnem Coskun, Turkey

Ebola - Democratic Republic of the Congo © John Wessels, South Africa

Absent innocence © Bruno Thevenin, Spain

Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

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By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

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Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

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Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

Andrei Stenin Press Photo Contest announces 2020 shortlist

Selected Books