Evgenia Arbugaeva wins Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2013 for poignant photo series on Siberia
posted Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 4:26 PM EDT
Siberian-born photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva has captured the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2013 for her poignant photo series on life in a small town in Siberia. Arbugaeva's winning submission, titled "Tiksi," after the name of the village she photographed, helped her capture the competition's grand prize, which includes a Leica M camera valued at 10,000 Euros (approximately US$13,000) and a cash prize of 5,000 Euros (approximately US$6,500). The second-place winner was Slovenian photographer Ciril Jazbec, who won a Leica M camera and lens.
Here's how Leica describes Arbugaeva's winning photo series in a press release issued this afternoon.
"In Tiksi, a portfolio of images shot in the small town of the same name on the coast of northern Siberia, Evgenia Arbugaeva takes a closer look at her birthplace and everyday life in the Arctic. Formerly an important military and scientific base at the heart of the Siberian tundra, the significance of the port is no longer visible. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global crisis of the 1990s, the population of the town decreased dramatically. Although relatively well supplied in the Soviet era, today the town’s remaining residents face severe unemployment and grim perspectives. More and more people have left the town because of the decline in the standard of living. In an intensely emotive and poetic manner, the photographer infuses her images of the Arctic desolation and the icebound landscape and its residents with a particularly fascinating beauty. She presents scenes of everyday life in plain and simple images without distracting details. Arbugaeva’s photographs show the struggle of the people against the never-ending cold, deprivation and loneliness of their environment. Simultaneously, the photographer captures her home town with a warm and loving eye. Her images radiate an almost fairy-tale magic that above all captures the imagination of their viewers."
To see more of Arbugaeva's "Tiksi" series, click here. To read an interview with her about the project, visit The Leica Camera Blog.
