Images Vevey unveils the winners of the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/2024

The Jury is delighted to unanimously award Sasha Kurmaz the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/2024 for his project Red Horse, a timely and urgent response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Jury Statement:

Red Horse is an expansion of Sasha Kurmaz’s continual investigation into his home country. His highly compelling work presents a powerful and diaristic response to the conflict. The Jury was drawn to the artist’s experimental technique, which reflects the fragmentary nature of day-to-day life and questions what it means to make art during war. This highly personal project creates a record of the artist’s own experience since February 2022, and contributes to a growing collective archive of the ongoing conflict. The Jury is pleased to support Sasha Kurmaz and the Prize will allow him to continue to creatively interpret the military invasion and its aftermath. Sasha Kurmaz says, “My focus is on the visual characteristics of everyday life and how it changes under the pressure of external circumstance. These images are my personal evidence of the dramatic events in which I happen to live.”

About Sasha Kurmaz:

Sasha Kurmaz is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He holds a BFA in design from the National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts, obtained in Kyiv, in 2018. He studies various models of interaction with public space, social groups and communities as well as explores the changing relationship between human beings and the modern world. The focus of his work is urban space, society, as well as examines the tension between the individual and the power structures. He uses different media to work with these issues, such as photography, video, public intervention, and performative situations.

The Jury is delighted to unanimously award Debsuddha‘s project Belonging as the winner of the Images Vevey Book Award 2023/2024.

Jury Statement:

Belonging is a beautiful, empathic portrait of the lives of the photographer’s two aunts, Gayatri and Swati, born as albinos in Kolkata, who have lived a life of social and psychological ostracism. Examining the space between societal exclusion and domestic familial intimacy, the work beautifully portrays the space they have carved out for joy and love within their lifelong companionship. Supporting each other as a necessary bond to give them the strength to flourish as human beings in the face of daily discrimination, they have met the struggle head on, creating a world based on their creativity, their dreams, and their love and understanding of each other.

About Debsuddha:

Debsuddha is a photographer born and raised in Kolkata, India. Originally working in documentary practice, since 2017 he has been working on personal projects, weaving together powerful yet intimate work that revolves around the social and psychological journeys we take as human beings.

The Images Vevey Light Broncolor Honourable Mention 2023/2024 is awarded to Weronika Gęsicka, who unanimously convinced the Jury by the relevance of her surprising and profound project Encyclopaedia.

Jury Statement:

Using found footage, archival material, collages, photographs, and the technique of artificial intelligence, Weronika Gęsicka creates a fictional visual encyclopedia starting from deliberately incorrect entries placed by editors as protection against plagiarism. The Jury was impressed by the complexity of Weronika Gęsicka’s project and found her to be one of the most innovative artists to date interested in a research-based approach to AI. Virtually and conceptually appealing, Encyclopaedia is grounded in history and shows a speculative and ironic, yet critical view of our post-truth world and the creation of knowledge in the near future.

About Weronika Gęsicka:

Weronika Gęsicka graduated from the graphics department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Academy of Photography in the same city. Her projects address themes tied to memory and its mechanisms. She is interested in scientific and semi-scientific theories that deal with memory, mnemonics and the processes of memorizing and forgetting. She is primarily a photographer and creator of objects.

The Jury is unanimously pleased to acknowledge the strength of Lisa Barnard’s photographic practice by awarding her the Images Vevey Documentary Honourable mention 2023/2024.

Jury Statement:

Collectively, the group was impressed by Lisa Barnard’s deeply research-based artistic approach and her commitment to critical stories. Her proposal What Is It Like To Be A Bat? takes its inspiration from Thomas Nagel’s 1974 philosophical paper and examines the link between mineral extraction, nature, the AI industry, and geo/socio politics. Representing a generation of photographers who are challenging traditional documentary formats and questioning the legitimacy of photography, Lisa Barnard’s proposal is very well-informed, timely and compelling.

About Lisa Barnard:

Lisa Barnard is an artist, researcher and teacher whose photographic practice focuses on real events, using polymorphic strategies. Her projects use both traditional documentary techniques, such as photography, audio, video and text, and more contemporary visual techniques and computer forms. She combines her interest in aesthetics and current debates around the materiality of photography with the political climate within critical projects, centered on new ecologies, new technologies, science and the military-industrial complex.

The Jury is unanimously delighted to announce Vuyo Mabheka as the recipient of the Images Vevey Special Jury Prize 2023/2024 for his proposal Popihuise.

Jury Statement:

Popihuise (the Xhosa vernacular version of the Afrikaans word for doll’s house) explores the artist’s lived experience through collaged still images, contrasting the childhood memories and the toys he would play with while surrounded by the reality of life in a South African township. Creating a unique series of artwork and installations inspired by this environment, he uses cut out pictures from his childhood, drawings, and photocollage, as a reference to ‘Umkokotelo’, a slang term for reinvented structures. Through his photography, Vuyo Mabheka seeks out some kind of expressive truth as a way to restore his memories and to find a way to come to terms with the reality of life in a South African township, for himself and his community.

About Vuyo Mabheka:

Vuyo Mabheka is a visual artist and photographer based in Johannesburg. Vuyo Mabheka is represented by Afronova Gallery. He was introduced into photography in 2017 through the Of Soul and Joy Photo Project in Buhlebuzile Secondary School, South Africa. He enjoys creating images that accommodate, engage and challenge audiences’ perspectives as well as to improve his understanding and grow as a photographer.

Anna Galí’s deeply emotional publication Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine presents a moving tribute to her late son, prompting the Jury to unanimously grant to her the Images Vevey Book Award Special Jury Prize 2023/2024.

Jury Statement:

In Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine Anna Galí trawls the internet and uncovers anecdotes from her son’s friends in an attempt to understand his life and addiction. She forensically gathers archival material and meticulously photographs his personal affects, piecing together a half-truth and working her way through grief. The book dummy delicately records a family tragedy and highlights the process of grief; providing Anna Galí with an opportunity to move forward, and us with a cautionary tale.

About Anna Galí:

Anna Galí studied a degree in Maths and later decided to develop a self-taught formation in photography, carrying out multiple online and face-to-face courses and workshops. She started semi-professional path in architecture and interior photography in 2014 and at present the photographer is combining teaching with her professional activity in architecture and interior photography and with the development of personal photographic projects.