VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2023
KHASHAYAR JAVANMARDI (IRAN)
NERA DI VERZASCA PRIZE

We are happy to announce that the winner of this year's Verzasca Foto Festival Awards is Khashayar Javanmardi with the project See the Caspian.
Congratulations to the winner, the finalists and thanks to the Jury and all the participants!

Gold Medal: Khashayar Javanmardi (Iran), See the Caspian
Silver Medal: Siqi Li (China), Empty Nest
Bronze Medal: Cansu Yıldıran (Turkey), Dispossessed

Finalists:

Ismail Ferdous (Bangladesh), Sea Beach
Robin Hinsch (Germany), Kowitsch
Margaret Shannon (USA), Extreme Pain, Extreme Joy
Katerina Tsakiri (Greece), The Smiley Cut
Natalie Keyssar (USA), Ukrainian Love Letter
Constanze Han (USA), The Betel Nut Beauties
Ville Kansanen (Finland), Numen

PRIZES
1st place
2’000 SWISS FRANCS
+ solo exhibition at Verzasca Foto 2023
+ projection of work at Verzasca Foto 2023
+ board and lodging for 4 days (30 Aug-3 Sept) during the Festival

All finalists (2nd - 10th place)
Projection of your work at Verzasca Foto 2023
+ board and lodging for 4 days (30 Aug-3 Sept) during the Festival

JURY 2023

James Wellford is the Senior Visuals Editor for Global Issues at National Geographic. Stories he has worked on at NatGeo include; Afghanistan, the Science of Sleep, the Circular Economy, the restoration at Notre Dame Cathedral, Covid stories around the world, El Salvador, Falcons, Lithium, the crisis in Niger/Mali, World War II Veterans, Uncontacted People in the Amazon, Ebola in the DRC, Eritrea, the Sudan, Uganda, Ghana, Kashmir, Indonesia, and Migration/refugee issues throughout the world. Prior to his time at NatGeo, he was the International Photography Editor at Newsweek Magazine for 12 years. He has also worked as a visual editor for Foreign Policy, CNN, and the Smithsonian. His career spans decades during which time he has served at an editorial director at Visura, founded ScreenProjects.org, edited the New York Daily News archival collection, curated numerous photography exhibitions , and served on a number of photography juries around the world. Dedicated to visual education, James has taught at the International Center of Photography and the New School in NYC.

www.nationalgeographic.com

Nadine Wietlisbach devises together with an interdisciplinary team exhibitions, publications and other discursive formats in the fields of contemporary photography and art. She is director of Fotomuseum Winterthur since 2018. From 2015–2017 Nadine Wietlisbach was director of Photoforum Pasquart Biel/Bienne, following her post as a curator at the Nidwaldner Museum in Stans, where she was responsible for all contemporary art exhibitions and publications, as well as presentations of the museum’s collection from 2012–2015. In 2009–2010 she worked for Pro Helvetia the Swiss Arts Council in Zurich and South Africa. Between 2013–2016 she was a regular lecturer at the Berner Hochschule der Künste in Bern. She founded the independent art space sic!Raum für Kunst in Lucerne in 2007, which is still up and run by the third generation of female* curators. In 2015, she was the recipient of a Swiss Art Award for her curatorial and editorial practice.

www.fotomuseum.ch

Ludovica Introini is an Art Historian. Head of Exhibition Management at MASI (Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana) Lugano, in the last years she has coordinated several projects on photography, among the others: Shunk-Kender Art Through the Eye of the Camera (1957-1983), Masterworks of Modern Photography 1900-1940 The Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art New York, James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, and Werner Bischof, Unseen Colour.

www.masilugano.ch

Lars Willumeit (born 1974) is a curator, writer and lecturer based in Zurich and Montreux. Since 2018, he has been a curator and responsable de projets d'expositions at the Photo Elysée in Lausanne. With degrees in Social Anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Curatorial Studies (Zurich University of the Arts), he previously worked as photo director for DU - Die Zeitschrift für Kultur in Zurich and as photo editor for GEO in Hamburg and New York. As an independent curator and editor working in Switzerland and internationally, he has realized a number of book and exhibition projects since 2014.

www.larswillumeit.com
www.elysee.com

Carol Körting. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, worked as a freelance photographer before studying photo editing at the Ostkreuz Schule für Fotografie in Berlin, Germany. She has served as photo editor for the renowned Leica Fotografie International Magazine (LFI) and its online platform for over a decade, during which time she has produced and edited countless photographic projects. As a professional portfolio reviewer, Körting was part of a team of jurors at numerous photography competitions. In addition, she gives talks, workshops and presentations on photo editing.

www.lfi-online.de

We are listed with
Photo Contest GURU, Photo Contest Deadlines, Photo Contest Insider, contestwatchers.com, concorsifotografici.com

VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2022
TOMASZ KAWECKI, A LAIR
NERA DI VERZASCA PRIZE

We are happy to announce that the winner of this year's Verzasca Foto Festival Awards is Tomasz Kawecki with the project A Lair.
Congratulations to the winner, finalists and thanks to the Jury and all the participants!

Nera di Verzasca Prize /Series:

Gold Medal: Tomasz Kawecki (Poland), A Lair
Silver Medal: Diego Saldiva (Switzerland), Everyone Has A Plan
Bronze Medal: Blom Marjolein (Netherlands), Failing Forward

Finalists:
Francesco Rucci and Francesco Marinelli (Italy), Future Food
Carlo Lombardi (Italy), La carne dell'orso
Rosa Rodriguez (Spain), The White Line
Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez (Colombia), Chilluns' Croon
Tim Smith (Canada), In The World But Not Of It
Tracy L Chandler (USA), A Poor Sort of Memory
Filippo Barbero (Italy), Nullus enim locus sine Genio

JURY 2022

Art historian and curator, Jean-Paul Felley has been the director of EDHEA - The Valais School of Art - since 2018, one of the five schools of the HES-SO Valais-Wallis (University of Applied Sciences and Arts).

Since 1989, he has organized exhibitions of contemporary art, architecture and design, and is the author of various publications in the artistic fields. In 1994, he founded with Olivier Kaeser the Geneva-based association attitudes, which has organized contemporary art exhibitions in Switzerland, Europe, Latin America and Lebanon. From 2008 to 2018, he co-directed, also with Olivier Kaeser, the Centre culturel suisse de Paris, the French branch of the Pro Helvetia Foundation. In 2021, he founded the association Biennale Son, which will oversee the organization of the 1st Biennale of Sound Art in 2023.

Francesca Todde is a photographer, designer and publisher, based in Milano (Italy).
Her research focuses on the invisible elements of relationships, sometimes crossing stories of sharing with animals. Her practice is not limited to photography but includes in the creative process the editorial aspect and the diffusion in printed form. Her work is represented by Contrasto. She co-founded with the artist Luca Reffo the publishing house Départ Pour l’Image.
Selected publications include: British Journal of Photography, 6Mois, Le Monde, M le Magazine du Monde, DLui di Repubblica, Fisheye, Vogue, Zadig, Yet magazine.

Lens Based Artist, anthropologist and curator born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1980. Janowski's work can’t be decontextualized from research processes. His projects explore the link within the Latin American territory deconstructing the concept of identity and the sense of belonging from an explicit subjectivity. 
The idea of historical context is central in his narratives, approached from a multimedia perspective. Janowski's late projects are characterized by using different mediums to support, complement, narrate and articulate stories: Offscreen sound, narrative sound, text, cartography and archival images are some  key elements often used in Janowski’s work to recreate the idea of territory and habitat. 
His most recent projects, both while teaching and in his own artistic practice, are based on collaborative and experimental premises.

Lydia Dorner is Prix Elysée Manager at Photo Elysée in Lausanne. Having graduated with degrees in Art History and French Literature, she worked in the Exhibition Department between 2012 and 2021, mainly on projects dedicated to contemporary photography. Her fields of research include the relationship between text and image, family photography and the re-appropriation of art historical icons.

Jörg Brockmann holds a BFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been working as a freelance photographer.

He is the director of the gallery Espace Jörg Brockmann since 2010 where he showcases swiss and international photographers who are mostly working in the field of documentary photography (www.espacejb.com).

He co-curated Arcoop Wall Project a photography festival in Geneva in 2019 and 2021.

We are listed with
Photo Contest GURU, Photo Contest Deadlines, Photo Contest Insider, contestwatchers.com, concorsifotografici.com

VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2021
NICOLA BERTASI, Pandemic Postcards
NERA DI VERZASCA PRIZE

We are happy to announce the winner and finalists of this year's Verzasca Foto Festival Awards. 
Congratulations to the finalists and thanks to the Jury and all the participants! 

Nera di Verzasca Prize /Series:
Gold Medal: Nicola Bertasi (Italy) /Pandemic Postcards

Silver Medal: Roger Grasas (Spain) /Ha Aretz
Bronze Medal: Raul Aragon (Brasil) /Post Modern Slavery

Finalists: 
Fernando Montiel Klint (Mexico) /Dystopia
Kostas Maros (Switzerland) /cicatrice 
Younes Mohammad (Iraq) /Open Wounds
Alexandra Riba (Greece) /If this is the end of the world..
Stefano Marzoli (Italy) /Oblivio
Rosa Lacavalla (Italy) /Sana Sana
Zinn Doro (Germany) /Future Kids

JURY 2021

NATASHA CHRISTIA is an unaffiliated curator, writer and educator based in Barcelona. She holds a BA in Archaeology and History of Art from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MA in Modern Art and Film from the University of Essex, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Publishing from the University of Barcelona. Her research focuses on the exploration and reinvention of dominant narratives through a novel reading of archival collections, the intersection of photography, film and the photobook, and the dialogue between 20th century avant-garde photography and contemporary forms of expression often labelled as post-photography. 

MELODY GYGAX is the Swiss agent of MAGNUM PHOTOS. 
Photography has been at the centre of her life for over twenty years, first as a picture editor for various media for many years and most recently as head of photography at the Basler Zeitung.
As a photo editor/curator she now works with brands, advertising agencies, corporate publishers, photo galleries, cultural institutions and photographers, showing them how to take their visual storytelling to the next level.
Melody is a regular jury member for photography competitions, is active as a qualified juror, teaches photography in the areas of conception, editing & storytelling, photo editing and is a long-standing expert on various portfolio reviews and holds seminars at the most important photography festivals in Switzerland.

FEDERICO ESTOL, Uruguayan photographer, graduated from the Image and Multimedia Technology Center of Politechnic University of Cataluña - BarcelonaTech. He is currently working as artistic director of SAN JOSÉ FOTO festival, promoting the Photobook Club Montevideo and as editor of El Ministerio Ediciones publishing house. He has been selected in numerous international festivals. He has been included in exhibitions at Aperture Foundation (New York), Fundación Atchugarry (Punta del Este), FOLA (Buenos Aires), Contemporary Art Space (Montevideo), MACRO Museum (Rome) and GNration (Braga).

ANN GRIFFIN works as a graphic designer specialised in editorial design. Based in Zürich, she collaborates with publishers, photographers and artists on different projects. Her main focus is book design with a particular interest in photography books. She has also led numerous workshops in different art schools, and teaches at eikon, Fribourg. Since 2017 she is a committee member of near. (Swiss association for contemporary photography).

ALESSIA LOCATELLI (Italy) is the artistic director of the Enrico Cattaneo’s archive and of Women Photography Biennial in Mantua (Italy). She managed some of the past editions of the SiFest (Savignano) and the Canon Award, specializing in photography and becoming Independent Curator in the organization of exhibitions with both public and private entities, in Italy and abroad; while in parallel the activity of curating and consulting continues for artists and photographers. She’s the signature of some art & photo magazines and critic of the Photography Dossier within the “CAM, catalog of modern art” published by the Editorial Giorgio Mondadori - Cairo Group.

VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2020
UYGAR ONDER SIMSEK, Patterns of Destruction
"NERA DI VERZASCA" FIRST PRIZE

Winners
1st. place: Uygar Onder Simsek
2nd. place: Michele Sibiloni (Italy)
3rd place ex aequo: Alex Kemman (The Netherlands) and Cansu Yıldıran (Turkey)

Finalists
Scarlett Coten (France)
Mariya Kozhanova (Germany)
Harsha Vadlamani (India)
Pascual Martinez + Vincent Saez (Spain)
Tim Franco (France/Poland)
Natalie Keyssar (USA)

2020 Jury
Michael Hiltbrunner, Curator, Lecturer, Researcher
Evelien Kunst, Freelance professional photography and media consultant.
Nuno Ricou Salgado, Parallel Artistic Director
Alessia Locatelli, Indipendent curator and art director
Rocco Venezia, Photographer and curator PHmuseum

VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2019
ANA ZIBELNIK (SLOVENIA), We are the ones turning
"NERA DI VERZASCA" FIRST PRIZE

Winners
1st. place: Ana Zibelnik (Slovenia)
2nd. place: Thomas Brasey (Switzerland)
3rd place: Panos Charalampidis and Mary Chairetaki  (Greece)

Finalists
Filippo Venturi (Italy)
Tomoya Imamura (Germany)
Iacopo Pasqui (Italy)
Ksenia Kuleshova (Russia)
Silvia Bigi (Italy)
Alvaro Gomez Pidal (Spain)

Jury
Alfredo De Stefano, Chief Executive Luz del Norte Fotografía, A.C. and Visual Artist, Monterrey, Mexico
Federica Chiocchetti & Sara Cuono, The Photocaptionist, Londra, Great Britain
Samuel Wolf, Graphic Designer and Art Director @ Wolf Studio, Zurigo, Switzerland
Patricia Karallis, Founding Editor in Chief, Paper Journal, Melbourne, Australia
Verónica Fieiras, Founder and Editor of Chaco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant 2019
AYLINE OLUKMAN (FRANCE), Psyche

Congratulations to Ayline Olukman that with her project "Psyche" wins a solo show at Verzasca Foto 2019.
In collaboration with PhMuseum.

Here our motivations:
"Through a personal and sensitive vision of the female universe, Psyche transports us into a dreamlike universe, narrating the caducity of human life and its relationship with its surroundings: in its similarity and in its diversity. The story is built with an incisive delicacy and with the lyricism of soft colours (which crystallises in an almost fairy tale atmosphere). Alternating scenes inspired by the great masters of painting, but without losing freshness, Ayline Olukman manages to surprise us through surreal landscapes and portraits of non-canonical perspectives.
Verzasca Foto Festival, being held in a small mountain valley surrounded by stones and deep woods, has always been interested in projects where the interaction between man and nature stands out. The artist’s intention to look for natural states of mind and human sensations in natural elements, through a fusion with the landscape, therefore convinced us to choose this project. 
The final selection was made by the girls on the Verzasca Foto team".

http://cargocollective.com/aylineolukman
https://phmuseum.com/grant

VERZASCA FOTO FESTIVAL AWARDS 2018
ILANA BAR (BRAZIL), TRANSPARENCIES OF HOME
"NERA DI VERZASCA" FIRST PRIZE

Winners
1st. place: Ilana Bar (Brazil)
2nd. place: Lebohang Kgany (Sudafrica)
3rd place: Alexey Shlyk (Belgium) 

Finalists
Cesar Dezfuli (Spain)
David Avazzadeh (Austria)
Gabriel Carpes (Brazil)
Marcelo Costa (Brazil)
Rafael Roncato (Brazil)
Elaine Pessoa (Brazil)
Shahab Naseri (Iran)

Jury
Eefje Ludwig, Indipendent photography consultant, curator and educator (NL)
Christophe Guye, Galerie Christophe Guye, Zurich (CH)
Eder Chiodetto, Photo editor-curator, São Paulo (BR)
Simon Tanner Photographer and president of VFG, Zurich (CH)
Chiara Fanetti Radio journalist at RSI, Lugano (CH)
Thyago Nogueira, Curator and Elisa von Randow, art director at ZUM Magazine, São Paulo (BR)
Alfio Tommasini Photographer and Art Director of Verzasca Foto

2017 VERZASCA "NERA DI VERZASCA AWARD" 
ESTRELLA HERRERA (Argentina), Magnetic field

Finalist are:
Snezhana von Buedingen  (Germany), Pierce Thom (Sud Africa), Arcenillas Javier (Spain)
Werner Christian (Germany), Maslov Sasha (USA), Laubscher Yann (Switzerland)
Clarke Giles Clarke (USA), Singh Sandra (Germany), Bufano Fernandez Marco (Argentina)

JURY

Myles Little Photo editor at TIME Magazine / curator (USA)
Silvia Mangialardi Art director Encuentros Abiertos- Festival de la Luz (Argentina)
Marie DuPasquier Curator and founder DISPLAY Berlin /museologist (Switzerland)
Vivienne Gamble Gallerist and founder Seen Fifteen Gallery, London (England)
Alfio Tommasini Art director Verzasca FOTO Festival (Switzerland)

2016 VERZASCA "NERA DI VERZASCA AWARD" 
Melanie Eclare (UK), After the fire

Winner: Melanie Eclaire
Finalists: Matt Hamon, Julien Chatelin, Delphine Schacher, Paul Thulin, Diego Saldiva, Raffaele Petralla, Marta Zgierska, Johanna Maria Fritz

JURY 2016
Brigitte Meyer, Photo Director, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland
Damien Poulain, Oodee London, England
Alfio Tommasini, Art Director Verzasca FOTO, Switzerland
Fabio Carnaghi, MARS - Milan Artist Run Space, Italy
Luc Debraine, L'Hebdo, Switzerland

2015 VERZASCA "NERA DI VERZASCA AWARD" 
Winner: Mateusz Sarello (Polonia) with the project "Swell"

Finalists (in alphabetical order): Javier Arcenillas, Pablo Ernesto Piovano
Massimiliano Pugliese, Thomas Friedrich Schaefer

Jury 2015
Ute Noll
Photo Director, Du Magazine, Svizzera
Hannamari Shakya
Editor in Chief, Raw View Magazine, Finnlandia
Frank Orthbandt
Photo Editor, London Independent Photography, Gran Bretagna
Noémie Richard
NEAR, Svizzera
Esther Woerdehoff
Galerie Esther Woerdehoff Paris, Francia