Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 19 November 2021

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – the 2021 Leica Oskar Barnack Award winner plus the latest Leica Hall of Fame inductee. Don’t forget that Head On Photo Festival opens today and the winners of the 2021 Head On Awards will be announced this evening.

But first, the Australian Photobook Awards.

ANZ Photobook Awards 2022 Judges

The 2022 round of the Australian Photobook Awards are open for entries until 28 February, 2022. The Australian section of the awards (there is also an NZ section) are now under the wing of Melbourne’s Photo Collective who have instituted a new pre-press (digital/dummy) award too. There is $9800 in print credit prizes up for grabs. Find out more here.

Awards:
2021 Leica Oskar Barnack

LA YAGUARA CENTER OF DETENTION, CARACAS – March 2018. Women inside a preventive detention center spend their days in a deranged inactivity. They adapte their space of their “dungeon” to make it look more like a home. They write letters or make drawings to their children, read the Bible, share cigarettes or iron their hair. (c) Ana María Arévalo Gosen

Venezuelan photographer Ana María Arévalo Gosen has won the 2021 Leica Oskar Barnack Award for the series “Días Eternos”. Her work was submitted by nominator Gonçalo Fonseca. The Award is worth 40,000 euros. The winner also receives Leica camera gear valued at 10,000 euros.

Arévalo Gosen’s series investigates what she describes as the “harrowing living conditions of women in jail” in Venezuela and El Salvador. Shot with a Leica Q, these images, taken in 2017 and 2018, reveal “the causes and consequences of imprisonment, not only for the women, but also for their families.”

She explains, “In the portraits of the women in jail, I’m concerned about the conditions of their imprisonment, where human rights seem to be ignored. I don’t think I can change these women’s lives, but at least through my work I can show that they exist.”

Arévalo Gosen, a member of Ayün Fotógrafas, a collective of Latin American women photographers, has also won the LUMIX Award and the Lucas Dolega Award for this series. She works between Bilbao, Spain and Latin America.

POLI-VALENCIA, CARABOBO. – March 2018. The women rest on the mattresses in their cell in the detention center. “Eternal days” is the description that one of the women already on trial uses to refer to the time they spend serving their sentence inside this center instead of a state prison. Most of these women have children outside of prison who do not visit them. (C) Ana María Arévalo Gosen

IZALCO, EL SALVADOR. – March 11, 2021. A woman bathes her daughter in the maternal sector of the ”Granja penitenciaria de Izalco”, the only maternal sector for the entire prison population of El Salvador. According to her ”being in prison with children is hell because there are things that children want that they cannot have”. Her son was born in the prison and does not know freedom. Although some of them can take their children out with a family member, hers are imprisoned for gang-related crimes. However, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, none of them have been able to take their children out or receive visits even from their lawyers. (C) Ana María Arévalo Gosen

ANA MARIA CAMPOS II PRISON, MARACAIBO. – December 2018. A group of women fix a volleyball net inside a State prison in Maracaibo. Their schedules include playing sports along with receiving classes, motivational and disciplinary workshops and arts and crafts. The purpose of these centers is to reform women and avoid relapse. They get redemptions if they behave properly to get their sentence reduced. (C) Ana María Arévalo Gosen

LA YAGUARA CENTER OF DETENTION . – March 2018 Daisy looks outside the entrance door and only access to light that these group of 22 detainees have. She is 47 years old and is accused of drug distribution and possession of crack. She sleeps on a mattress on the floor, (C) Ana María Arévalo Gosen

Leica Hall of Fame Award

(C) Ralph Gibson

Renowned American photographer Ralph Gibson is this year’s recipient of the Leica Hall of Fame Award. As part of this honour, the Leica Gallery in Wetzlar, Germany has a comprehensive retrospective of Gibson’s work on show until 28 February, 2022.

In the sixties Gibson was an assistant to Dorothea Lange and then later, Robert Frank. In his early years as a photographer he toyed with commercial and documentary work before choosing a more conceptual and abstract use of the medium. While Gibson’s style was defined by his strong black and white work, he has also embraced colour.

(C) Ralph Gibson

(C) Ralph Gibson

“Whether mysteriously emotional or clearly recognizable; analogue or digital; black and white or, more rarely, colour – there is no doubt that Ralph Gibson has produced a multilayered and moving life’s work,” says Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Art Director and General Representative Leica Galleries International. “For this, we are delighted to induct him into the ranks of our Leica Hall of Fame winners.”

(C) Ralph Gibson

(C) Ralph Gibson

(C) Ralph Gibson