Iranian photographer Sadegh Souri has been shortlisted as a finalist for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2016 (LOBA).
In his photo collection, titled ‘Waiting Girls’, Souri depicts Iranian women prisoners in 12 photo frames. The series includes portrayals of different activities of the women and girls, while praying, eating and sleeping, IRNA reported.
All the pictures reflect various emotions on the women’s faces, conveying their feelings.
The winner of the main category of the award will receive a cash prize of euro 25,000 ($27,000) and in addition a Leica M camera and lens worth euro 10,000 ($10,800).
The winner in the newcomer award category will receive a cash prize of $11,350 and a Leica M camera.
In addition to the two categories, ten finalists will be awarded each with a cash prize of $2,700 for their works.
Moreover, i-shot-it.com will award a third category in partnership with Leica Camera AG, namely the Leica Oskar Barnack Public Award. The award winner of this category will be determined via online voting on the platform for photo competitions - i-shot-it.com - and will receive a cash prize of $2,700.
From 1914, German optical engineer Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), the inventor of Leica, used the prototype camera he developed, today known as the Ur-Leic, for photography.
He captured various events in entire series of photographs and became one of the earliest photographers to document the relationship between man and the environment. For instance, his photography of the floods in the German city of Wetzlar in 1920 is now considered to be the first reportage series shot with a 35 mm still film camera.
The award named after this photography pioneer was first awarded in 1979, on the occasion of Barnack’s 100th birth anniversary.
Sadegh Souri, 31, is a graduate of filmmaking from Zahedan University of Applied Science and Technology in Sistan-Baluchestan Province. He took up photography as a career in 1999. Souri is the winner of several national photography awards since 2006.
The winners will be honored in the course of an official prize-giving ceremony that will be held in Germany. The date and venue are yet to be announced.
