Finalists Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2018 / Leica Oskar Barnack Award

Stéphane Lavoué

Over a period of three years, Stéphane Lavoué has created a mosaic of landscapes, portraits and detailed motifs, captured in Guilvinec, Brittany, where he lives. With his “On the Edge of the World” series, he has created a cosmos of images that illustrate his feelings about life and tradition in this windswept area.

Turi (Salvatore) Calafato

Many Italian families spend their summer vacations at the beach in their own country; and things get particularly crowded and lively around August 15th, the Ferragosto, their national holiday. In his “Amuninni ’u mari” (Let’s Go to the Seaside) series, Turi Calafato has documented the hustle and bustle on the beaches of Sicily – carefree, straight on and colourful.

Stephen Dock

Children with tired faces, bare walls with straggling remnants of barbed wire, unfounded, aggression in the eyes of men. This is what Northern Ireland looks like today, as captured it in the “Architecture of Violence” series by French photographer Stephen Dock. The times of armed conflict are over, yet the country’s soul can find no peace.

Christian Werner

In his “Road to Ruin” series, German photographer Christian Werner explores new ways of reporting on conflict situations. With quiet images that border on poetic, he speaks about the lives of the people in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria following the fall of East Aleppo.

Elsa Stubbé

The motifs in this series offer no explanation, but rather are baffling nature studies, that emerged during a number of trips the photographer took in Europe and to Canada, visiting nature reserves, as well as zoos and botanical gardens. Detached from their original context, they captivate the viewer, taking them on a poetic journey through a very special cosmos of the imagination.

Kechun Zhang

China is a country displaying enormous growth in many areas – often as not, to the detriment of the environment. Nature appears to play only a secondary role in modern development. To draw attention to this problem, Kechun Zhang’s series, “Between Mountains and Water”, is made up of motifs where the mountains and rivers in all their opulence are pushed to the forefront – while the people in the surroundings seem to be absurdly incidental.

Samuel Gratacap

Samuel Gratacap has been following refugee trails and visiting camps around the Mediterranean for more than ten years. He took photographs on the Italian island of Lampedusa, in southern Italy, Tunisia and Libya, observing refugees as they wait, as they set themselves up in exile, and as they deal with their new homelands. This has resulted in studies and portraits on both sides of the borders that divide, but also at times unite.

Ernesto Benavides

Despite humankind knowing better, the destructive exploitation of nature and of the planet’s natural resources continues unhindered around the world. In his “Dredges” series, the Peruvian documentary photographer, Ernesto Benavides, offers a disturbing glimpse at illegal gold mining in the Amazon region.

Vanja Bucan

“Fill the earth and subdue it,” is the divine commandment found in Genesis 1:28, the Judaeo-Christian story of creation. Vanja Bucan’s “Sequences of Truth and Deception” series does not reveal whether this is a good or a bad thing; however, she stages the dominion of humanity over the planet in an intriguing manner.

Daniel Chatard

For his “Niemandsland” (No Man’s Land) project, Daniel Chatard journeyed to the brown coal district in North Rhine-Westphalia – right into the heart of the action, where an apparently endless conflict is being played out between long-term locals, environmental activists, mining employees and the police.

The 2018 Finalists

Introducing the ten finalists 2018 with exclusive reports and interviews.

Stéphane Lavoué

Turi (Salvatore) Calafato

Stephen Dock

Christian Werner

Elsa Stubbé

Kechun Zhang

Samuel Gratacap

Ernesto Benavides

Vanja Bucan

Daniel Chatard