Certainly of the highlights for me this year, apart from celebrating the 15th anniversary of KLPA and being in Kuala Lumpur to organise Exposure+ Photo 2023 was to be invited to the Celebration of Photography 2023 by Leica in October. This was my second trip to Leitz Park to witness the announcement of the LOBA winners.

The Leica Oskar Barnack Award is one of the photography industry’s most prominent awards dedicated to documentary photography and I am honoured to be a nominator for the past few years. This year’s winning projects had a distinct artistic aesthetic over the previous winners in my opinion and perhaps it is a broadening of the photographic vision to be more inclusive to a wider audience. Nevertheless, the winners works had serious underlying narratives that challenges the typical journalistic approach of documentary photography and again, it comes back to the core of contemporary practice which is portrait photography and the importance of the human story.

At a time where the consumption of social media images takes mere seconds, we can be grateful to the jury for allowing us to delve closer into these projects and come away with a deeper understanding of the photographers intentions.

A sense of place

Ismail Ferdous, the winner of LOBA 2023 with his series titled ‘Sea Beach’ is a portrayal of beach goers at the famous Cox Bazar coastline in Bangladesh. Photographed whimsically at midday and with artificial light over winter months in the past 4 years the portraits are layered with humour, elements of consumerism, friendships, family moments and a touch on climate change. As a photojournalist, Ismail is well aware of the infamy of Cox Bazar as one of the world’s largest refugee camps which lie a few kilometers away. This subtle reference to both extremes – the enjoyment of a place vs. the internment of a persecuted people – the Rohingyas; the former celebrated as colourful portraits, the latter unseen in the series, is a disconnect to the unsuspecting viewer but a powerful reminder of how photography can be selective in the depiction of reality.

Estranged generation

Ziyi Le wins the Newcomer with his series New Comer. Self-doubt and emptiness compelled Ziyi to begin a project to connect with and document Chinese youths that shared his emotional state, his kindred spirits. Reaching out to anonymous individuals via social media, he quickly found his subjects in the form of over 40 estranged youths from which he formed friendships to gain trust to photograph their intimate moments.

“How can you capture feelings in pictures? What does a face say about a person’s emotional state? And, are there really feelings that unite and move a whole generation?” Ziyi’s intimate portraits have a sense of self and calmness about them. These youths although seemingly feeling lost and engulfed with emptiness shows perseverance and hidden determination. Ultimately, it is a reflection of Ziyi’s quest to understanding his personal emotive state through the discovery of others in similar circumstances. It is often said that a portrait is a reflection of the sitter as well as the photographer.

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All images © named artists and courtesy of Leica Oskar Barnack Award.