UP22 opens at the MUSEC

About

The Global Open call has been running now for 5 years and the 4 winners have touched on themes such as the deterioration of the environment, the search for self identity, overcoming limitations and the importance of traditions and crafts this year.

Thanks to the partnership with the De Pietri Artphilein Foundation, the UP22 competition award has given the first prizewinner in addition to exhibiting their works and featuring them in a dedicated catalogue to accompany the exhibition  a monetary prize of CHF 2,000; the second prizewinner receives CHF 1,500, while the third and fourth runners-up receive CHF 1,000 each.

The first prize went to Vietnamese photographer Quan Nguyen Ho (Life Garbage), the second to Indian photographer Dipak Ray (Frame within Frame). Third and fourth place were awarded respectively to Malagasy photographer Tolojanahary Ranaivosoa (The Yellow Revolution) and Russian photographer Olga Dmitrienko (Genoese craftsmen and artists).

A special prize was awarded by Artphilein Editions of Lugano, consisting of the publication of a prestigious monograph of the works went to Tolojanahary Ranaivosoa.

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
FIRST PRIZE: Quan Nguyen Ho (1986) – Life garbage
Quan Nguyen Ho was born in Vietnam in Ha Tinh Province. An architectural engineer, he lives and works in Hanoi. He began taking photographs of his travels in 2016, but collecting memories soon became a fully-fledged passion. Over the years, his sensitivity towards the issue of the environment led him to focus on photography that can raise public awareness about the most current themes that are often overlooked. «Life garbage» is a project created between 2021 and 2022. It records the tragic conditions of open-air landfills in the Hanoi suburbs, where foul-smelling toxic waste is collected, and paradoxically represents a source of survival for people and animals.

SECOND PRIZE: Dipak Ray (1986) – Frame within frame

Dipak Ray was born in Kolkata, India, and works as a teacher in a government-funded school. Photography has been his greatest passion since he was in secondary school, when he was given his first pieces of equipment, a camera and a roll of film. In 2010 Ray bought a Nikon D7000 and began doing research and carrying out experiments in the world of digital photography. The project «Frame Within Frame» is a dream that finally came true after being cultivated for a long time. The portfolio was created in 2019 and 2020, along the Kangsabati in West Bengal, a river that is often dry, and that is mainly fed by rainwater. During the winter the fog cloaks the river banks, and it is indeed in the fog, in the water, that Ray positions some of his wooden frames and asks his brother to walk around them. The result of this is a series of thought-provoking, evocative photographs.

Tolojanahary Ranaivosoa was born in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and is a geographer. He approached photography in 2011 as a self-taught photographer and then honed his skills by regularly participating in workshops and training courses. He became particularly interested in documenting moments of everyday life, capturing aspects that are curious, tragic, or exhilarating. In 2014, he began portraying the streets of his city. Little by little, as he took pictures, he became aware of the frequent presence in his shots of one or more yellow tanks used for water supplies. In 2019, while protest movements took place in the city to express dissatisfaction with the supply and distribution of water, Ranaivosoa began taking a series of images in different parts of the city center of Antananarivo aimed at denouncing the decay and the state of social malaise. This led to the creation of the project «The yellow revolution» in which the artist shows the extent to which life in the capital on the island revolves around those yellow tanks, which represent both the shortage of water and the gap between social classes.

FOURTH PRIZE: Olga Dmitrienko (1986) – Artigiani e artisti genovesi [Genoese craftsmen and artists]

Olga Dmitrienko was born in Moscow, where she studied at the School of Journalism and specialized in mass media design. She began taking photographs during her studies; she soon realized that what interests her most is the "human being", and that she loves to capture the faces of people that strike her. After graduating from university, it was during one of her trips that she discovered Italy. She found Genoa to be a people-oriented city, where she encountered both kind gestures, smiles, and a notion of time without the frenzy of everyday life that our society tends to forget or steal from us. This led to the project «Artigiani e Artisti Genovesi» [Genoese craftsmen and artists] in which the artist presents a series of photographs portraying the faces of artisans in their workshops or homes.