Winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2014
Sub-Categories
- The winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2018
-
The winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2018, who received the Alfred Fried Peace Medal are (in alphabetical order):
"Ángeles", Constanza Portnoy, Argentina
"Finding Freedom in the Water", Anna Boyiazis, USA
"Lucky", Selma van der Bijl, Netherlands
"Milaya - Patterns of Home", Nora Lorek, Sweden
"Reading for Tehran Streets", Maryam Firuzi, Iran
Click on the title to see the complete story.
Winner of the Alfred Fried Photography Award's world-best picture on the theme of peace, the Peace Image of the Year, worth € 10000, is Anna Boyiazis, USA, with an image from her work "Finding Freedom in the Water" The winning picture will be on display for one year at the Austrian Parliament. Winner of the Special Award of the Jury for the best single picture entry, worth € 1000, is Jo-Anne McArthur, Canada,
with her image "Pikin and Appolinaire" Winner of the The Children Peace Image of the Year, worth € 1000, is Kaja Tasevska, Macedonia,
with her image "Daydreaming" Click on the title to see the complete story.
- Kaja Tasevska, Macedonia
-
Daydreaming
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Children Peace Image of the Year 2018
Kaja Tasevska, Macedonia: Daydreaming Peace is a state of mind. A feeling of love, safety and comfort, fulfilment. You are sure to have it if you can fall asleep into such a feeling. Like in this moment in a car driving through the winter landscape of the Stara Planina area in Serbia. Kaja Tasevska pictured her 11-year-old cousin Luna on the way back from a family skiing trip. The jury chose this calm and formally remarkable picture as the best photograph of the children’s entries. Kaja Tasevska, ninth-grader at a grammar school in Skopje, Macedonia, began taking photographs when she was „really very, very young,“ she says. She also likes skiing, skateboarding and dancing. Initially she only wanted to send pictures of the family trip to her friends, to share the pleasure of the event. But then she thought longer about the picture of Luna and entered it into the Fried Award, because she likes its themes of humanism, peace and friendship. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Kaja Tasevska
- Nora Lorek, Sweden
-
Milaya - Patterns of Home
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medail
Nora Lorek, Sweden: Patterns of home Saving the most precious bit of home. Furnishing memory with something tangible. Reassuring yourself of your skills and history. It all becomes manifest in the backdrop to the women and children portrayed here. These are embroidered bedspreads, called milaya. The women brought these milayas with them to Uganda as they fled the civil war in South Sudan. They are a piece of home and they represent the hope to be able to return. Is fleeing peaceful? No, never! But when the jury appreciated these pictures by Nora Lorek as images of peace, they did so because they are, after all, the symbol of a happier life. A symbol that people cling to. At the same time Nora Lorek’s photographs point to an issue widely ignored: There are indeed some very poor countries that take in refugees. An estimated 270 000 refugees live in the Bidibidi camp in north-western Uganda. And who knows, for instance, that even a country like Ecuador has by now taken in 400 000 refugees, from Venezuela in this case. We should remind ourselves of that when we in Austria, in Germany, in very rich Central Europe, complain about ‘waves of refugees’. And when here, first the hearts, and then the borders, revert to stone and barbed wire. Nora Lorek, born in Germany in 1992, living in Sweden since 2005. She studied photojournalism at Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall and has worked as a concert photographer. Winning the title of College Photographer of the Year in Sweden earned her commissions from National Geographic and others. By now her pictures have also been published in the New York Times, in Die Zeit, in Dagens Nyheter and in Expressen. One of her larger projects is Calais Jungle, a sociological-visual long-term study of a French refugee camp. Her main theme is the main theme of our day - migration. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Nora Lorek
- Selma van der Bijl, Netherlands
-
Lucky
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medail
Selma van der Bijl, Netherlands: Lucky At last! They waited, doubted, worried, hoped, trembled. And now they can see each other, they are reunited. Now they can hug. Now, for a moment, all is well. Now, for a moment, they don’t think of what may yet come, perhaps not all of it good. In the pictures by Selma van der Bijl we see the pure joy of refugee families – in the moment when those torn apart become families again, uncertainty yields to touch, fear turns into safety and comfort. And war into a small peace. No longer Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Yemen, where bombs rain on school busses. Now there is only a sheet of glass between them. And then not even that. The Alfred Fried Photography Award is a photo award. And this means that it is also about formal brilliance, not photographs with no legs or bodies ‘cut off’ as is the case here. But was this relevant here? Selma van der Bijl simply swept up the jury in her joy: She made us a present, the present of sharing in the joy of the people we see here. And at the same time she kindled the desire to show these pictures as widely as possibly, for instance to those who think that a foreigner is a second class human. Selma van der Bijl, Dutch, mother of a son, worked for 12 years in the consumer goods industry before deciding that there were more important things to do. So she started to photograph people, usually happy people, and earned her first merits as a wedding photographer. For this she won an award, which did not remain her only one. And she graduated from the Fotoacademie Amsterdam to turn to other themes, but always involving human drama. Birth, for instance. With Lucky she wants to make us aware of something quite simple and seemingly self-understood. She wants to show that migrant families are made up of mothers, fathers, daughters, sons. With all the feelings that mothers, fathers, daughters, sons in temperate regions have as well. She wants to promote empathy. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Selma van der Bijl
- Constanza Portnoy, Argentina
-
Ángeles
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medail
Constanza Portnoy, Argentina: Ángeles – or: What love can save Two illnesses that defy easy explanation have crippled Jorge and his wife Vero permanently. Turning one into a man without arms or legs, the other into a woman bound to the wheelchair. But they found each other, they love each other – the result of this love is their daughter Ángeles. Only images of desperation could emerge from such a constellation, one might think. But the opposite is true. Argentinian photographer Constanza Portnoy found – and captured – a story of courage and care, of bravery and tenderness, of confidence and peace of mind, when she met these three very special people. And of the girl Ángeles she says that this child is “full of light” and equipped “with a deep knowledge of justice and a respect of differences”. Ángeles turns this into appreciation and empathy for and cooperation with her parents. Again: Even when selecting the best image of peace at the Alfred Fried Award not everything is beautiful, nor whole, not everything is joyful that we have seen and chosen here. What we do see, even here and especially in the photographs by Constanza Portnoy, is the power of people to make the most of their fate in an admirable way. Here a war was won, a war that wreaked bodily destruction. But which was not stronger than the peace that Jorge, Vero and Ángeles carry in their hearts. Constanza Portnoy was born in Buenos Aires in the 1980s, years when Argentina lived through a terrible military dictatorship. Human rights, brutally violated during this dictatorship, are her theme and have determined her choice of profession. At the age of 23 she completed her psychology degree at the University of Buenos Aires with a distinction, then worked for many years with children and adults in institutions for the handicapped. She came to photography out of her own accord, travelled through Latin America, took her cue from socially committed photographers like Mary Ellen Mark and Darcy Padilla. In a journal that is as wise as it is touching, about the work selected here, she describes the need to participate in the life of those you photograph before you press the releaser. To be patient instead of giving in to the instinct for capturing the most impressive image. And precisely because she is like she is, has Constanza Portnoy achieved images that made a big impression on the jury. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Constanza Portnoy
- Anna Boyiazis, USA
-
Finding Freedom in the Water
Alfred Fried Photography Award – World's Best Picture on the Theme of Peace
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medail
Anna Boyiazis, USA: Finding freedom in the water Zanzibar. An island east of the African continent, a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania. 98 percent Muslim. Socially dominated by upholders of the Quran. Nowhere do more people die of drowning than in Africa. Many because they cannot swim. One should be allowed to learn it. But women in Zanzibar are banned from learning how to swim. And now they do it anyway. They dare to do it, they risk a double dare. The project is called ‘Panje’. And it is contagious. It encourages more and more girls and young women to take themselves more seriously than the verdict of old bearded men. US photojournalist Anna Bouyiazis has created a visual monument of this transgression and self-assertion: a little story that stands for something really big, for women’s emancipation. Far from our uptight debates about burkini bans in swimming pools, this is a declaration of love for women who make their peace with their desire for freedom of movement, for autonomy. Boyiazis shows pure survival spirit, as joyful as it is serious. And she does it, by the way, in a rare aesthetic and photographic perfection. At the periphery of the world, Boyiazis has made a discovery. She has visualized something that we would never know about, despite media oversupply. She has reminded us of beautiful stories in precisely those places where we don’t normally look. And in doing so she may have made even us more optimistic. Anna Boyiazis was born in California, the daughter of immigrants from the Aegean and from East Africa. She studied at prestigious universities in the US, worked initially in design and architecture. She won a World Press Photo Award and various other accolades and her work has been shown in many international exhibitions and in major US and European magazines.
Photos by Anna Boyiazis
- Jo-Anne McArthur, Canada
-
Pikin and Appolinaire
Alfred Fried Photography Award 2017 – Special Award of the Jury for the best single picture entry
Jo-Anne McArthur, Canada: Pikin and Appolinaire Making peace with creation. For photographer Jo-Anne McArthur this means making the world a better place for animals, too. The intimacy we see here comes from the rescue of an orphaned young gorilla from bushmeat hunters in Cameroon. The jury was unanimous in selecting it as the winner in the individual photograph category. The ape is called Pikin and sits on the lap of Appolinaire Ndohoudou, who works for the animal protection initiative Ape Action Africa and who himself grew up as an orphan. Here Pikin is driven to a larger protective enclosure after treatment at an animal clinic. The orphaned gorilla has been sedated for the transport, wakes up briefly, finds itself in the arms of a human and, reassured, soon falls asleep again. Jo-Anne McArthur firmly believes that animals are individuals and have feelings. And if proof were needed she supplied it with this magnificent picture full of tenderness. A moment when it transpires that animals too know a feeling of safety and comfort, are able and willing to trust and need affection. And that they recognize when it is offered to them. Jo-Anne McArthur, born in Canada in 1976, discovered photography early during her geography degree, initially as an artistic medium, but then, as she calls it, “as a tool to affect change”. First and foremost, the author, photojournalist and animal rights activist seeks to affect this change in our relations with animals. She has published several books, including Captive, in preparation for which she documented the sad life of zoo animals for a whole decade. Her work has been exhibited widely and published in The Guardian, The Washington Post, in Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and in National Geographic. In 2018 the photograph shown here earned her the audience award at the international competition Wildlife Photographer of the Year. There is a very, very beautiful interview with Jo-Anne McArthur available on YouTube, put up on 20 October 2017. We warmly recommend watching it.
Photos by Anna Boyiazis
- Maryam Firuzi, Iran
-
Reading for Tehran Streets
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medail
Maryam Firuzi, Iran: Reading for Tehran streets The street, says Iranian filmmaker and photographer Maryam Firuzi, quoting the Roman architect Vitruvius, could be the site of tragedy, comedy and satire. For her, the streets of her home town of Tehran are more a site of turmoil and sadness. In contrast, the walls of her flat provide a protective space for her imaginings and dreams. And yet, Firuzi has taken to the streets, turned a folding chair into a throne and women into an unassailable, self-absorbed queens. Staged, of course. A fairy tale. Women with a book in their hands. Reading! If people would read more, Firuzi claims, if they read mostly poems, the world would be a more peaceful, a better place. Because reading would make you more tolerant, create empathy with others, understanding for a life other than your own. Maryam Firuzi, born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1986, turned early to literature and painting, later to Persian calligraphy. She has a Diploma in Mathematics, a Bachelor in Software Engineering. She studied at the Art School in Tehran, finishing with a Master in Cinema and Film Studies. In one of her films she explored the impact of Ginsberg’s poems on young people in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She is particularly interested in freedom and the voices of women in society. The struggle for the right of women to move about freely. A typical photograph is that of 24-year-old actress Mahsa at the Persian Gulf. It shows the young woman without hijab, and Firuzi says, “It’s like being born again.” (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Maryam Firuzi