The Moscow International Foto Awards committee gets hundreds of outstanding images each year, making the selection process more difficult than ever. Our favorite MIFA Honorable Mentions from 2021 offer us fresh viewpoints in all of the categories, despite the fact that they weren't picked as category winners.
The Future is a photograph taken in a distant hamlet in India, many hours north of Chennai. It aims to tap into the potential that every child possesses, regardless of where they come from.
Gajan Balan is a multi-award-winning photographer and artist who has established a career on the concept of shared creativity. His mission is to inspire people to create and find joy in doing so. His company's material receives over 1 million views and 500,000 minutes of viewing every month, has been published in Vogue, GQ, and Rolling Stone India editions, and has been awarded gallery slots in London, Paris, and Milan for 2021. Simply put, he wants to explore the world and share fascinating stories.
This little lighthouse may be found on the Swedish west coast, just outside the city of Lysekil, right on the sandcolored cliffs adjacent to the sea. The atmosphere of walking around this region and watching the waves crash onto the rocks is very primal.
Prague's Charles Bridge. Summer 2020.
Patrick Hofmann is 34 years old and works as a real estate agent in Dresden, Germany. He does not make a living from photography. Nonetheless, it seems inappropriate for him to refer to photography as "simply a pastime." It's much more than that for him.
KUTHO is influenced by a Burmese sense of merit. Covering Buddhist relics with gold, which is only done by male worshippers, is a typical Buddhist rite for gaining virtue and improved karma. Women are banned to approach under the pretense of impure status. The series explores the link between religion and power, as well as the visible/invisible, cult/occult, and parallel universes. The photographer utilizes the same leaf to encase her memories in gold light, which she is unable to access, and to pose a question about human nature's duality. (gold 24k manual intervention)
Carlo Traini enjoys nighttime travel as much as he enjoys walking in the dark. Our intuitions are born in the dark, and we expand their roots by walking. As the sun rises, they will bloom in our lives like fireworks. When he shuts his eyes in the middle of the night while walking through the city streets, his spirit is hit by the stillness of the neighborhoods, and his eyes crash into the startling brightness of the street lamps. The darkness of the night grips him at that time, he hears the voices of the people he cares about, and his thoughts turn to the dawn.
A faint sound of MAGATAMA touching each other is TAMAYURA (MAGATAMA is a type of ancient Japanese jewelry). It also implies "for a brief moment," "moment" (moment), or "faint." On August 9th, the photographer photographed this piece at an old Japanese traditional house in Kamakura, Kanagawa, a Japanese ancient city. He created this piece to reflect Japanese beauty and the delicate beauty of girls, similar to the sound of TAMAYURA. The delicate beauty is enhanced by the usage of Japanese KIMONO and an antique home.
The Karo people dwell in Ethiopia's lower Omo Valley. As they sat on the riverbanks, the photographer observed this little child having his face painted by a buddy. Karo are masters of body and face painting, utilizing natural white chalk and earth-colored clays to create simple line and dot drawings that resemble guinea fowl feathers and other animal themes on their faces and bodies. Bead strings are also hung around the neck.
By redefining the historical function of pictures in society, Carlos Gamez De Francisco is enquiring into the problematic and subjective idea of power. Portraiture has been utilized by the bourgeoisie for generations to display their riches and success via the employment of lavish embellishments and clothes. His goal with this series is to analyze how power and opulence are portrayed. This series explores the ambiguity of what true power is and who wields it. It raises important topics that are often overlooked. It's all about repurposing the meaning of power and building hope.
Leopard Kaboso carried her four-and-a-half-month-old cub out of the woods near Ole dikdik stream in Masai Mara, Kenya, in October of last year. The cub was first shy, hugging her monther's neck and refusing to let go. Kaboso eagerly awaited the cub's adaptation to the new surroundings. The cub got more energetic with time and began to leap about her. Finally, the cub completed the challenge of jumping the river, following Kaboso. That was, we suppose, her first time diving into the river.
This is a jellyfish mini-series that was filmed in 2021. The extraordinary shape of these denizens of the seas and oceans drew the photographer in, as if they were not jellyfish, but aliens from other worlds.
