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Ismail Ferdous und Ziyi Le: neue Bildbände der LOBA-Gewinner 2023

Ismail Ferdous and Ziyi Le: new photo books by the LOBA 2023 winners

The two LOBA 2023 winners have now brought out their award-winning series, Sea Beach and Newcomer, as photo books. They have both been published by Imageless of China.

Last year, during the presentation of their series, both LOBA winners expressed the hope of being able to publish their work in the form of a photo book. Now the time has come: with 95 and 48 images respectively, the two publications provide in-depth insights into the Sea Beach and Newcomer projects.

Ismail Ferdous: Sea Beach

Stretching for over 120 kilometres, the beach at Cox’s Bazar on the Bay of Bengal is a place of longing for many – including the photographer himself: as a small child he spent relaxed, carefree holidays there with his family; as an adult he returns to the place time and again. “Sea Beach is woven from the threads of my childhood memories,” says Ferdous. The popular location for many of the inhabitants of Bangladesh is considered a cultural melting pot, where millions of people from the most varied levels of society, come together in search of moments of relaxation, recreation and distraction. The country’s cultural diversity is represented on the beach in brilliant colours and magnificent style.

“The beach at Cox’s Bazar represents a popular escape into nature for an overpopulated country. It’s a place where anyone, from any level of society, can afford to take a holiday. The lack of a sense of urgency is noteworthy, as though time itself is begging people to abandon all their burdens and go to the beach.”

At the same time, Cox’s Bazar has another side, just beyond the beach on the other side of the hill. “I returned to Cox’s Bazar in 2017,” Ferdous remembers. “History had turned the area into a safe refuge for over a million Rohingya, who had fled from ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. For years, I documented this profound displacement of people. The beach was only a few kilometres away from the refugee camps, but it wasn’t until early 2020 that I found time to return to the shores of my youth. My gaze was now coloured by the tides of other oceans, and in returning to Cox’s Bazar it felt like I was travelling down the corridors of memory, attuned by temporal and spatial distance.”

Ismail Ferdous

Ismail Ferdous was born in Bangladesh in 1989, and now lives between his homeland and New York City. He is a member of the Agence VU’ in Paris and is committed to social, cultural and humanitarian subjects. He already began taking photographs while studying at the Business School in Dhaka. Following the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka in 2013, one of the worst industrial disasters in the history of Bangladesh in which more than 1100 workers lost their lives, Ferdous set an example by taking a stance against the devastating effects of the fast fashion industry, with his documentary film and photo projects, The Cost of Fashion and After Rana Plaza. He has photographed themes dealing with migration and flight in four continents. The photographer works for most important international newspapers and magazines, and he has been the recipient of many honours, including the 2023 Leica Oskar Barnack Award for Sea Beach.

156 pages, 95 colour images, 20 × 28 cm, English/Bangladeshi, Imageless
www.imagelessbooks.com

More about Ismail Ferdous

Ziyi Le: Newcomer

Motivated by his own feelings of alienation and isolation, experienced after he moved to Hangzhou, the Chinese photographer began his portrait series four years ago. He launched the project via Weibo, a twitter-like portal for short messages in China, where he found people interested in his sensitive portrait series. The message he put out at the time read: “As an outsider who has been in Hangzhou for nine months, I’m eager to understand the lifestyle, state of mind, and spiritual outlook of newcomers like me. If you’re someone living in a foreign place, I’m willing to document your situation.” For Le, the subsequent staged photo shoots were also a reflection on his own self-doubt and feelings of alienation and spiritual emptiness. “This body of work allowed our paths to cross momentarily, and then we continued on our separate ways,” he explains. The result is a touching portrait of the “new comer”, a generation in search of their place in society and personal development.

“Throughout my whole time growing up, I had little communication, and was alienated for a long time, thereby giving rise to a sense of being in the middle of nowhere. Out of a basic instinct as a photographer, I decided to explore the similar void in the state of mind of young people like me, scattered in different cities, to see their faces as well as explore my deep self-doubt.”

Ziyi Le

Ziyi Le was born in Fujian in 1993 and currently lives in Yunnan working as a freelance photographer. He began his LOBA project in March, 2020, when he had moved to Hangzhou for professional reasons, but soon became bored by the routine of his job. Thus, he developed a portrait series with people of his own generation. His New Comer series earned him the 2023 Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award.

100 pages, 48 colour images, 21 × 23 cm, English/Chinese, Imageless
www.imagelessbooks.com

More about Ziyi Le