Gomma Photography Grant 2023 Winners

The distinguished grant contest awarding astonishing photography. This year in its 10th edition, the Gomma Grant can look back on a decade of spotting and awarding photographers, who have gone on to grow their careers internationally as well as getting published and exhibited in various countries.

Gomma, even though being an established name within the photography community, has stayed true to its intention of awarding unconventional and daring works of artists, that show their unique take on photography and penetrate the viewer emotionally on a profound level. Working with artists across the genres of black and white, colour, portrait, documentary, photojournalism and many more, Gomma is known for selecting works of exceptional quality. Keeping the international reputation of being ethical and inclusive, Gomma welcomes photographers of all nationalities, religions, sexual orientation and gender identity as well as all skill levels and mediums (analogue, digital). Gomma funds and supports emerging talents as well as established photographers. The consistent, superior quality of the shortlisted and finalists of the Grant is recognised by publishers as well as curators and regularly gains press attention, worldwide. The artists shortlisted and awarded have successfully grown their careers and their reach internationally. Always on the lookout for bold, unusual and striking photography, since 2014, Gomma has helped many photographers to advance in their field. The Gomma Grant jury continuously includes a variety of high ranking professionals and a selection of up-and-coming personalities of the industry; offering photographers the opportunity to have their work seen by the best. To support photographers on their creative journey and help them to refine their work, Gomma offers reviews to every photographer taking part in the contest. The Gomma Photography Grant will be open for submissions on September 1st 2023.

While the renowned British Journal of Photography notices: Gomma Photography Grant has been going since 2014, and has picked up a reputation for finding cutting-edge and emerging work.

The overall Winner of the 10th Gomma Photography Grant is:
Marylise Vigneau - AARZO


These photographs encapsulate the lightness of a fleeing moment, combined with a profound beauty, by revealing the coexistence of this exact duality. A duality carried on throughout this story. Wherever a photograph is taken, the inner world of the taker and the taken collide and thus a story emerges, Marlise’s inner song beautifully merges with that of her subjects, creating a unique duality as a storyline. The juxtaposition that is presented in this work, seamlessly unifying sorrow and hardship, longing and negate, fun and strive and ever continuing, shows us the fragility and similarity of our human essence. It makes the proposition that the building blocks of humanity don’t vary and no matter what the circumstances, one inner light, a reason to burn bright, transcends to another, to all of us. This work suggests, in a delicate and unobtrusive way, a coping mechanism to deal with the rough and destitute conditions of life and work that people are facing, exploring their different ways of mastering the rapids’ current - and the common denominator, creating resilience is connection, with ourselves, our folks our calling or creating – an indestructible, positive outlook on humanity in its purest and simplest form and an ability to see our story in another ones, to hear our common song. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: Aarzoo is an Urdu word meaning wish and longing. This series is about these emotions and their deviations. It is a subjective journey through Pakistan, a country that remains a riddle despite several extended stays since 2010 and the mix of exasperation and tenderness I feel for it. The construction of these diptychs occurred slowly over the years as I began to distinguish the layers of reality, walk my way through the veneer of things, identify the stories and plots, the characters and the overtones and fuse them with the shadows of my own inner theatre. Images started to merge and make sense, a new sense born out of apparent clashes or unexpected semblances. These deconstructed and reconstructed images weave alternative scenes. They suggest stories; they constitute a track game through an often rough but poetic reality. They address the collective narrative through a gaze that covers some tracks and hints at others. Time somehow stands still. Space is saturated with memories and untold tales, walls stare, and people and animals walk by. These pictures have been taken between January 2010 and January 2023.
www.marylisevigneau.com


Second Prize
Celine Croze - Mala Madre


This work strikes the spectator as almost painted in aquarelle. The warm colours carry a gust of vintage winds and pull us back to a place long gone - or maybe only existent in the fading memories of the ones left behind. Celine’s unmistakable aesthetic tells the fairy-tale of grave robbers, of innocence lost and of better days that haven’t come. Blurred, like seen through a film of tears or smeared with muddy fingers, the style emphasises the stories hardship brilliantly. Weariness and relinquishment stand side by side in a folktale, to surreal to be believed and too harsh to be forgotten. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: Mala Madre is the name of a plant I discovered in a cemetery in Venezuela. There, at dusk, men come to dig up bodies and find the remains of gold. Shrouds fill the ground and souls wander restlessly. I was fascinated by this plant, its beauty and the way it made this place its own. Its simple presence gave life to this totally desecrated place. I was obsessed by her discovery. She had opened a breach in my own history, my deepest intimacy. I imagined a tale of a woman who waits for her love, he won't come, she's faded, her imagined children are nothing but tears and her big sadness transforms her into Mala Madre. She becomes the mother of all lost souls : the Dejados atras. In this desert, I crossed the limbo of a world on the edge of a precipice, with the last souls who survive of this extreme crisis Since 2015, due to the social crisis, five million people have left the country, leaving behind their children, there are 2.5 millions orphans known as the Dejados atrás (those left behind). The tale, allowed me to open a dialogue between the supernatural and this tragic reality.
@celinecroze


Third Prize
Valery Poshtarov - Father and Son


A premise as simple as can be, hold your son by the hand, yet what emerges from Valerie’s work is stories, as nuanced and striking as if they were recorded speech. Is love unconditional, is there a wrong way to show it, what does society teach men and boys about intimacy. that they grow fearful, judgemental, or even resentful of it. There is no more universal sign of trust and connection than the human touch, for the young, the sick and dying – jet the strong feel weakened by it. This story shows the similarities, the consequences, and the love only fathers and sons can share in a simply touching, transcendental way. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: The Father and Son project, emanating from the simple yet profound act of holding hands, delves into the nuanced dynamics of paternal-filial bonds through participatory photography. It transitioned from personal reflections to a cross-cultural narrative, spanning Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia, Serbia, and Greece. By capturing moments of reconnection, it opens dialogue on male vulnerability. The images echo the silent language of love and understanding across the chasms of cultural and personal differences. They weave a narrative of shared human experience.
www.poshtarov.net


First place Black and White
Elli Monferier - Sanctuaire


This astonishing black and white work feels like rainy memories, diluting over time. The premise of incorporating the feeling of mortality into the fabric of the photographs is a gamble that absolutely paid off. Scenes of praying pilgrims, as timeless as the desire of something more to life than a simple ending, a universal and timeless endeavour, a substantial human fear, and ground for philosophies. Elie mastered to convey the doubt, the strive and the circularity of this occult occurrence in images that appear from another time or from all times or none at all. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: Lourdes is known for its low grey skies, for its pilgrims seeking penance or health to the daylong rhythm of ave marias, and for the merchants in the temple who make of the city the second tourist destination in France. Religious trinkets are everywhere, even in restaurants and hotels. But the faithful who come from all over the world are clearly looking for something else. A spiritual and absolute place where they can address their appeals, their supplications, and offer their devotion. Walking through Lourdes, mingling with pilgrims, attending ceremonies, day after day I tried to discover the universal element in the physical and spiritual exaltation promised by a sacred place. But how can one articulate the ineffable? How can one see the invisible? How can one observe the moment when radical otherness appears in a blinding flash? Sanctuaire is the hallucinatory and mystical vision of human life torn between fragility and hope. For the theologian, mystery sets the limits of knowledge. But mystery is ceaselessly challenged by power relations— between the secular world and clerical institutions- that are part and parcel of all religious life. For the photographer, that mystery is contained in the other beings before him. To meet and photograph the other requires more than simply finding common ground. That otherness must be preserved, so as to make way for a new way of seeing. A true meeting is always a revelation. At the end, Sanctuaire offers a meditation on the possibility of mystery for humans torn between the certainty of their ending and the promise of eternal life.
www.eliemonferier.com


Best documentary work
Lisa Murray – Through My Child’s Eyes


There are those moments in life, which by intensity force you into the “now”, that strip you from the possibility to escape into your potential future or perceived past, the most positive being birth, the most grave a severe sickness. If these two should ever collide, what will come from it? A painfully sensitive, ludicrous, and paralysing situation, transformed into an honest, touching portrait, a witness report from a woman who experienced both at once: new mother and cancer victim. She manages to parallel these great emotions, the absurdness, the void and overwhelming love by documenting striking events and the everyday, paired with her future child`s perspective in a one-of-a-kind, experience- centred documentary that couldn’t be more intimate.- Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: In 2013 I was diagnosed with stage four HER2-positive breast cancer. The news came just six weeks before our second baby was due to be born. The road ahead was long, involving a two-year cardio-toxic treatment plan, further complicated by a pre-existing heart condition (postpartum cardiomyopathy) I had developed while giving birth to our first child, Griffin. Luckily, our unborn baby was safely tucked away in another woman’s womb, being gestated for us with love and care. At the time of his birth, I had completed 2 of 18 planned chemotherapy treatment cycles. As a result, my frail body was going through medically induced menopause. Looking at it now, from an ‘all clear’ standpoint, I felt a burning need to create something tangible of it, to lay it all down in story form so I could begin to understand and process what my family and I went through. I began to trawl the archives for visual memories to draw from when I discovered my five-year-old’s album. Looking back, I remember encouraging him to photograph me at key moments throughout my treatment plan. I think I felt seeing me through a camera might help him process what was happening to his mother. So, in part, these photos are his memories. Composed of recreated archival photographs originally taken by my five-year-old son, Griffin, paired with my own current reflections of the time, 'Through My Child’s Eyes' chronicles a chapter of time when new life and near death momentarily sat side by side. The series seeks to provide a balanced view between the past and the present, through child-adult perspectives, in sickness and in health. I have every reason to believe it is the power of motherhood that has kept me ‘earth-side’ ever since that fateful diagnosis and I am loving the gift of life every-single-day.
www.lisamurrayphotos.com
All about Lisa Murray


Gomma new flavour Award
Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom – Proof of existence

This work encapsulates the essence of what our New Flavour Award strives to price. The weird, absurd, obscure, most honest actualisation of who you feel you are in your mind, materialised and thrown into society, mixed into the ordinary, ready to engage. This fantastically creative work gives us a taste of how this might realise, birds of paradise and wallflowers, in common places, reversing and refocussing our understanding of the “true self”, confidently open with all its spikes and edges, rendering everyone their own work of art on the stage of habituality. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: 'Proof of existence' involves the creation of various characters, each with their unique personality and world, captured in everyday locations and situations. The project's theme is to normalize the weirdness within us, celebrating our differences and showcasing that they exist in all of us; we're all strange characters who are a part of society. Through our work, we aim to make a social impact by changing the way we view others. We advocate for solidarity, open-mindedness, and greater inclusion and diversity in the media and the world at large. The project blurs the line between reality and fantasy, combining the documentary and the staged, In addition to the characters the series will contain still life or landscape images with the same bizarre atmosphere. The duality between the two will emphasize the fine line between the bizarre and the everyday.
www.thefotometro.com


Honorable Mentions
Balaji Maheshwar - Dear Cinema

A patriarch is to lead his family, by following his dream, he shall bring prosperity to his home. These dreams don’t always work in our favours though – and to admit defeat is one of men’s hardest challenges. This work shows how a family’s path unfolds because - or in spite of the aspirations of their leader. How the world of cinema shapes their stories and self-perception, their longings, and aspirations. A family is shaped by their father’s self- understanding, by a nostalgic conservation of old days of glory, passed down to their sons. It shapes all of them, over time, subconsciously. How does my father shape me and how did his father shape him? Can I break the cycle or lead us to the light, can we have a common dream? This work shows the paths that were taken to reach a common goal and how the grandson of a cineaste, becoming a photographer is able to encapsulate, ever-lovingly this story of a family’s strives onto images, that when we look upon them unfold a movie in our minds. - Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement Sometimes I think about how cinema suspended me and my family from reality. My family would have been very different if my grandfather had not left his hometown with dreams of becoming an actor. He was fascinated by the image of an actor that he saw on screen. Cinema gave my family a time under the spotlight but the life we constructed around it crumbled after the death of my grandfather. It was my father who lead me into the world of cinema and while he too dreamt of becoming an actor, his dream was star crossed. He struggled all his youth, only to make a fleeting appearance in a film. While we shared a close bond during my childhood, at some point in time, I began to drift away from my father. To confront the distance between us, I began to photograph him. There exists generational trauma within the family, and I am looking for ways to overcome it. “Dear Cinema,” became an exploration to understand myself and my father through cinema and its many worlds. The more I worked on this, the more I understood what cinema gave and what it took.
www.balajimaheshwar.in


Mariusz Smiejek - Not Surrendering

Mariusz condenses the various and profound consequences from the Northern Irish conflict inflicts on the working class in this black and white documentary work. He shows in raw and unadorned images, the magnitude and gravity this hardship has on the people, the next generation, the way of thinking and self-identity. Anger, a Lust for life and inherited frustrations unfold in many ways, from para-military outrage to a right to youth and happiness. These photographs capture a whole group of people’s way of dealing with the consequences of being trapped and defined by this conflict, by despair, revenge, disillusion, and identity – all linked to the past and drawn to the future, leaving a working class in shatters and a new generation having to climb on the gravel to build a future.- Laura Estelle Barmwoldt (Gomma)

Artist statement: Not Surrendering brings us closer to an almost completely unknown social group of Loyalists marginalised by British politicians, the royal family, and mainstream media for various reasons. Series of portraits introduces us to the daily lives of the local British working-class as well as members of its illegal paramilitary groups. Recognised as terrorist organizations until recently, these associations still carry weight, sow fear, and control Northern Ireland’s Ulster. By focusing on the spaces which the Loyalists inhabiting, aspects of their daily lives, and the particularities of their neighbourhoods separated by ominous ‘peace walls,’ those photographs brings us to the fore the psychological state of siege which permeates working-class districts in Northern Ireland. The portraits also spotlights the atmosphere of despair which accompanies each successive generation – trapped socially and mentally in unprocessed traumas from which it cannot escape. Series of portraits from my photo book 'Not Surrendering' about post conflict Northern Ireland, photographed between 2010 -2020 and published in 2023.
www.mariuszsmiejek.com