The French artist,  Marie-Pierre Cravedi, is the winner of the dst 2014 Emerging Artists – Photography – International Award, won with the work “Reúnion”, a photographic display of her own family. The focus is on individual behaviour in the family context, and Marie-Pierre Cravedi raises different question, from the way an individual maintains his/her identity, to the way relationships work within a group, including also the challenge, in an environment as complicated as that of the family, of how the camera finds its space to take pictures without altering the attitude of the players. The French photographer shows her family as it is, or at least, as she sees it, and she also appears in some photos. This is one way found to transmit to the public what her role is within the group, assuming that this work is precisely her interpretation of the family setting in which she moves and has her being. For David Balsells, jury chairman, the work of  Marie-Pierre Cravedi is “very intimate and realistic” emphasising that it is “photography that takes time to understand. Time is needed to understand the message transmitted”. The eye of Marie-Pierre Cravedi fixes a type of photograph marked in time, that portrays specifically a moment important to her.

One of the most important national awards in photography, with a cash prize of 7,500 euros, the dst Emerging Artists Award also made two honorary distinctions to Diego Saldiva and to Cecil Burban. The work of Diego Saldiva portrays the physical changes that take place during the birth of his son, captured by the camera at a particularly sensitive moment. The first focus of the photographer’s attention is on the scar left in the belly of his wife after the birth. Then, Diego Saldiva focuses on his son, also suffering from some scars caused by the rare disease with which he was diagnosed. For Diego Saldiva, the photographic act was essential to record the physical changes that occur at this time, helping to concentrate the feelings and meaning of each event. In this work you can see the loss of one epoch and the discovery of another one, the loss of the physical tie with the child and paternity and its absence. His work can be viewed on www.diegosaldiva.com.

Cécile Burban, submitted ‘Dernières séances’, a series of pictures of cinemas abandoned in Africa and of those guarding them, projectionists without reels of film and directors without a stage. After a meeting with the filmmaker Souleymane Cissé and a visit to cinemas in Mali, the photographer wanted to know why modern encounters between films and film-lovers occur exclusively on temporary screens. According to Cécile Burban, whenever we enter these spaces full of history and soul, we become wrapped in nostalgia, in buildings living in limbo. At www.cecileburban.com you can view this, and other works, in all their splendour.

At this year’s award, eighty photographers, in two days, submitted their portfolios to the jury. Divided into three rooms and with 21 critics, the competing photographers explained the works present in this final phase of the competition. As usual, the members of the jury had a difficult task in selecting the winner, because, as David Balsells, the jury chairman said, “the quality of the work is of a very high standard. Reviewing portfolios is never easy. But the pre-selection stage is important”.

dst Emerging Artists Award

The initiative of the dst group, this award, part of the “Meeting Images, International Photography Festival”, selects the best work in Contemporary Photography and is the best platform for artists to get an opinion on their work and eventually to be included in exhibition and publication projects. At this event, celebrating its 5^th. anniversary, all expectations were surpassed, and around 500 entry applications have been received from many countries, in particular from Brazil, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Greece, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Poland, opening the way to consolidating the dst Emerging Artisists Award in Portugal and beyond. This event, that awards the best portfolio with 7,500 euros and exhibition in the next Meeting Images event, is an excellent platform for artists, whether emerging or already with their career in place, to make their art known. For more than two days more than twenty directors of museums, gallery owners and editors, among others, analyse projects in individual sessions, assessing and advising participants on the quality of their works and the best strategies for becoming known.

Meeting Images

The 2014 Festival Meeting Images held from 18 September to 31 October  has a “Holy Open Week”, from 17 to 20 September. This twenty-fourth event is distinguished by the spirituality of its theme: Faith and Hope. Built on a series of representations that involve a symbolic, cultural and religious aspects of the contemporary identities, Hope & Faith suggests an approach to some of the more pertinent problems associated with Faith in highly turbulent times, helping predict the structural dimension of a new world under construction. Under the teaser “Where is my mind?”, which serves as a musical metaphor to the International Photography Festival, there is a kind of rhythm that serves as a motto to the multiple visions of the Festival, sometimes tense and impregnated with hope, which make this event a highly spiritual voyage. The Photography Festival Meeting Images is one of the most prestigious events in our country in the context of the visual arts, and is widely recognised internationally. Apart from the vast number of exhibitions, a wide range of activities take place geared to the photographers’ community and the general public. The Festival, that originated in Braga, holds many evebts that promote contemporary photography through the exhibition centre, which at this event is reinforced in the cities of Lisbon, Porto and Guimarães.