Winners of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2017
Peace is the greatest thing!
Alfred Fried Photography Award – World's Best Picture on the Theme of Peace
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medal
Cletus Nelson Nwadike, Sweden
Peace is the greatest thing! Over 200 years without war – Cletus Nelson Nwadike could not have chosen a better country than Sweden to flee to. He was born in 1966 in Nigeria into a bloodbath which began shortly afterwards and lasted until 1970, killing two million people and leaving endless darkness. Nwadike fled from this horror as soon as he was able to. And he who loved a camera even as an eleven-year old boy, being allowed to take photos of the most beautiful girls of the village; he who says “taking pictures keeps me alive”; he went to Sweden and studied visual communication at Jönköping university. Sweden! He still is very happy there. With a family who does not have to fear for their lives. With pictures which are not burnt by a looting soldier. With men who may get older than 52, like his father or 48 like his grandfather of whom Nwadike doesn’t even have a photo. Sweden. The taste of snow. The glittering trees. The path without dangers. The joie de vivre. “Peace is the greatest thing,” sings Nwadike for the snowflakes falling from the sky at night. Cletus Nelson Nwadike is the author of several collections of poems, including ‘A Short Black Poem’, and an independent photographer. His black-and-white portraits of young harvesters in Nigeria gained him the Lens Culture Portrait Award. In 2012 and 2014, he won the Photographer of the Year Award of the photographic magazine ‘Tidningen Foto’. Some of his works appeared inter alia in National Geographic. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Cletus Nelson Nwadike
Alfred Fried Photography Award – World's Best Picture on the Theme of Peace
Alfred Fried Photography Award – Winner Alfred Fried Photography Award Medal
Cletus Nelson Nwadike, Sweden
Peace is the greatest thing! Over 200 years without war – Cletus Nelson Nwadike could not have chosen a better country than Sweden to flee to. He was born in 1966 in Nigeria into a bloodbath which began shortly afterwards and lasted until 1970, killing two million people and leaving endless darkness. Nwadike fled from this horror as soon as he was able to. And he who loved a camera even as an eleven-year old boy, being allowed to take photos of the most beautiful girls of the village; he who says “taking pictures keeps me alive”; he went to Sweden and studied visual communication at Jönköping university. Sweden! He still is very happy there. With a family who does not have to fear for their lives. With pictures which are not burnt by a looting soldier. With men who may get older than 52, like his father or 48 like his grandfather of whom Nwadike doesn’t even have a photo. Sweden. The taste of snow. The glittering trees. The path without dangers. The joie de vivre. “Peace is the greatest thing,” sings Nwadike for the snowflakes falling from the sky at night. Cletus Nelson Nwadike is the author of several collections of poems, including ‘A Short Black Poem’, and an independent photographer. His black-and-white portraits of young harvesters in Nigeria gained him the Lens Culture Portrait Award. In 2012 and 2014, he won the Photographer of the Year Award of the photographic magazine ‘Tidningen Foto’. Some of his works appeared inter alia in National Geographic. (Text by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
Photos by Cletus Nelson Nwadike
