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Martin Kantor Portrait Prize 2019 – Gallery of Finalists

2019 Leica Oskar Barnack Award - The Finalists 1 of 144

Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

Leica Oskar Barnack Award Winner: Mustafah Abdulaziz

Mustafah Abdulaziz’s approach to his monumental series is his way of processing his understanding of water as a universal theme. For over eight years now he has been travelling the world, searching for metaphorical or striking images that capture the significance that water can have. When considering the work involved in the series, Abdulaziz offers a glimpse into his particular way of thinking and how the project came about.

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

“‘Water’ is a long-term photographic project about how human beings interact with the natural world and what this means for our civilization and our future. In this sense, it is my first endeavour of such magnitude. My visual approach to the work on ‘Water’ could be distilled down to naturalism and simplicity in perspective and scale. I’m incredibly wary of unnecessary complexity and try to limit the tools I use in order to come up with creative, and what I believe to be honest, methods for observing a topic that spans every aspect of human experience.”

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

“What this means in practical terms, is that what matters most to me is to have and believe in a personal ethos that I express in the way I visualize things. What distance from a subject do I feel is comfortable for me and for them, and why? When does my photography portray what is essentially necessary to what is happening, and when does it fail? Photographs inherently have the potential for great beauty, and this is also something I am cautious about. It must be balanced with something else, something meaningful in terms of concept and presence, otherwise I don’t believe in it; and if I don’t believe in it, I can’t expect a viewer to either. When it comes to the photos in Water, this means that I am constantly assessing and reassessing each and every part of my visual approach. It must be an on-going and organic process of discovery. It has to fail at times, because failure during experimentation brings me liberation; it illuminates new paths for me, that I would otherwise never follow.

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

I do not stage people, and the reasons for this are twofold: the first is quite simply that I’m just not very good at it; the second is that it doesn’t fit with the way I see. I want to observe, to participate in people’s lives as myself, as a person and not as a photographer. The camera and this reality I photograph are rather ancillary. My pictures evolve from a certain rhythm or dance. I don’t know how to photograph any other way. ‘Water’ is different for perhaps one critical reason, and that reason is choice. This project is my way of exploring the world, of participating in a relevant and responsible way. It is a way to give meaning to an overwhelmingly large but critically important topic. I choose to do this work not only because it brings me great fulfilment, but because it is necessary. Our relationship with the planet may just be the most important story of our times.”

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

Mustafah Abdulaziz

Born 1986 in New York City, Abdulaziz began studying Journalism and Political Science but did not complete the studies. As a photographer he is self-taught. He moved to Berlin in 2011 after working as the first contract photographer for The Wall Street Journal. His long-term project, Water, which he has been pursuing for more than eight years, has received support from the United Nations, WaterAid, WWF, VSCO and Google. It has been published in Der Spiegel, The New Yorker, Time and The Guardian.

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Mustafah Abdulaziz, Water

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

Newcomer Award Winner: Nanna Heitmann

Kingdom of Myths: The Yenisei River is one of the longest rivers in the world, and it was the guiding line that Nanna Heitmann followed through Siberia. She speaks about the ideas that lie behind her Hiding from Baba Yaga series.

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

“My mother comes from Russia; but Russia, apart from Moscow, was just a large, blank space on the map. So, I decided to do a semester abroad in Tomsk, Siberia. The way I imagined Russia was defined by Soviet children’s films and Slavic fairy tales; and they also inspired my story, Hiding from Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is an important figure in Slavic folklore. She is an unpredictable and dangerous witch who lives in a little hut in the middle of the forest. For my project, I borrowed a Russian Jeep, packed it with camping equipment, and drove towards the Tuva Republic in the south of Siberia. I had some inspired images in mind and places I wanted to see along the way. I received support from the mother of a friend, who was working there as a geologist, and who helped me connect with people and find locations. Visually speaking, Russian painters were a great source of inspiration: Ivan Bilibin, an illustrator of Russian fairy tales; and Mikhail Nesterov, whose symbolic pictures at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow used to amaze me as a child.”

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

“To a large degree, I followed the flow of the Yenisei along my journey. Its source lies in the Tuva Republic – which is part of the Russian Federation – on the border with Mongolia. It meanders northward through the whole of Siberia, until finally emptying into the Arctic Ocean. Following its course took me through the raw wilderness of the Siberian taiga. I viewed my journey as a documentation of life along the river, and about the mythology of the region. I searched for dreamlike images. It soon became clear that the river itself was not so important. I photographed local characters because people have always sought protection and freedom along the banks of the Yenisei and in the bordering taiga: criminals, escaped serfs, renegades, adventurers and Old Believers.”

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

Born in Ulm in 1994, Nanna Heitmann studied Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at college in Hanover. She spent a semester abroad in Tomsk, Siberia. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Lensculture online magazine’s Emerging Talents Award for her work. The same year the series shown here earned her the Vogue Italia Prize of the PHMuseum’s Women Photographers Grant. She became a Magnum Agency nominee in 2019.

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Nanna Heitmann, Hiding from Baba Yaga

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

The border between Mexico and the United States is 3,200 kilometres long. There have been fences and walls there, since long before Donald Trump; yet now there are signs of change. For his Borderlands project, Francesco Anselmi took a look around on the American side: what is life like in the shadow of the wall?

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

Francesco Anselmi was born in Milan in 1984. He studied at the International Center of Photography. He has already been a Leica Oskar Barnack Award finalist in 2014. Anselmi lives alternately in Milan and in New York.

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Francesco Anselmi, Borderlands

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

Enayat Asadi focuses upon the issues of poverty, injustice and social discrimination in Southwest Asia. For his series Rising from the Ashes of War, Asadi photographed Afghan refugees in transit in Iran, following the Afghan War. To accomplish this work, it was necessary for him to dare to travel through dangerous regions in eastern Iran.

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

Enayat Asadi was born in Iran in 1981. He studied electrical engineering. Self-taught, he started working as a photographer in 2009.

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Enayat Asadi, Rising From the Ashes of War

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for over one hundred years. Fighting has escalated once more, since 2018, with Palestinians protesting every week at the border with Israel. This is where the project, Palestinian Rights of Return Protests, emerged. Hassona’s images have caught the attention of the media and social networks – in particular, a picture of a young fighter, reminiscent of Eugène Delacroix’s famous picture, Liberty Leading the People.

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

Mustafa Hassona comes from the Gaza Strip and is a staff photojournalist at the Turkish news agency, Anadolu.

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Mustafa Hassona, Palestinian rights of return protests

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

In his series, I Died 22 Times, Rafael Heygster delves into the philosophical question of when war begins. He looks for answers beyond the battlefield: in computer games, weapons trade fairs, and other places where war has become a consumable item.

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

Heygster was born in Bremen in 1990. He is currently studying Photojournalism in Hanover.

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Rafael Heygster, I Died 22 Times

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

In his project, Soon to Be Gone, Tadas Kazakevičius draws inspiration from American photographers who documented the Great Depression, such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. They also used their photography to attempt to capture the times and things that were destined to soon come to an end. With a similar aim, the Lithuanian takes a nostalgic look at his homeland.

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

Tadas Kazakevičius was born in Vilnius in 1984. He is currently working on a book series that is due to be published in 2020.

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

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Tadas Kazakevičius, Soon to be Gone

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

Solarski grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and his pictures conjure up the legacy of an era in which holidays and relaxation were part of the manufacturing process. In his series, Rest Behind the Curtain, he presents holiday hotels and sanatoriums as decrepit backdrops for bizarre snapshots.

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

Michal Solarski was born in Poland, where he studied Politics. Later on, he went to study Photography in London, where he now lives and works.

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Michal Solarski, Rest Behind the Curtain

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

With his Lines and Lineage series, the photographer wants to draw attention to a blind spot in U.S. American history: the period before 1848, when Mexico ruled the American West. Because there are virtually no photographic testimonies from that time, Houtryve attempts to fill the gap in his own particular way.

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

Tomas van Houtryve was born in Belgium and works as a conceptual artist, photographer and author. He has received various international awards. His project appeared in book format in September 2019.

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Tomas van Houtryve, Lines and Lineage

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Snezhana von Büdingen, Meeting Sofie

With her series, Meeting Sofie, the photographer looks in a very personal manner at a subject not widely discussed in society. Using poetic imagery, she depicts the daily life of her teenage protagonist, who has Down syndrome. Her insightful images reveal to us the limits of our own normality.

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Snezhana von Büdingen, Meeting Sofie

Snezhana von Büdingen was born in Russia. She lives and works in Cologne.

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Snezhana von Büdingen, Meeting Sofie

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

For his project, Utopia, Sebastian Wells visited 24 refugee camps in seven countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. On these visits, he captured in pictures their symbolic and political functions, as well as the roles of the people living there.

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

Sebastian Wells was born in Königs Wusterhausen and lives in Berlin. He has been a member of the Ostkreuz Agency since 2018.

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Sebastian Wells, Utopia

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Johan Willner & Peo Olsson, Heaps

The duo Willner & Olsson worked together on the long-term project, Heap, which documents the landscape and the changes it is undergoing. The photographers aim in this series to discover and observe processes of change that generally remain hidden from the general public.