Best Photos of POPCAP 2014

The 3rd African photography competition POPCAP 2014 announced the names of top five winners, The Guardian reports. The contest was open to all photographers from countries of Africa, as well as diaspora representatives. The top prize is the invitation to attend at least one of five different exhibitions: in Basel (Switzerland), Dublin (Ireland), Cape Town (Africa), Lagos (Nigeria), and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). While determining the winners jury took into consideration the visual aspect of the shot, as well as the idea behind it, its technical execution, originality and context.

Joana’s photo project “Hââbré, The Last Generation” explores African ritual of scarification – scars created through superficial incisions made to the body. According to Joana, it was difficult to locate tribes practicing scarification, because, under certain religious and the local authority pressures the tribe members turned away from the ritual or kept it as a secret. The series illustrate different approaches to African identity, and the connection between the past and the present. The characters in the photos are the last remaining witnesses of the diminishing age of tradition in Africa.

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Ilan worked on his project “Legacy of the Mine” over the course of two years, from 2011 to 2013. In his series he examines the social changes in the lives of Africans that took place in the past hundred years, – the growing demand for gold, diamonds, coal, platinum changed the economic structure of many African countries. “I tried to compare the mineral exploitation in Africa to the rest of the world by telling the stories of real-life individuals”, – Ilan comments.

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His documentary project “Uncanny” tells about life in the Republic of Congo after the fall 2014 elections. The collection includes pictures of members of Leonardo’s family, politicians, religious leaders and local journalists. “I tried to capture the pace of life, and to understand people’s realities and construct my own”, – Leonardo shares. According to the artist, he made an attempt to show the collateral impact of war instead of its direct hits, and to present Congo through lives of ordinary folks.

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Transmedia documentary “Love Radio” is dedicated to the subject of recovery and establishing peace in post-genocide Rwanda. Anoek and Eefje created a story of two opposing villages by utilizing the plot of popular soap opera Musekeweya that’s in a way similar to Shakespearian “Romeo and Juliet”. It’s a story of violence under a vail of romance, which uncovers the solution to stop things like that from happening again. The project is crossing the boundaries between fact and fiction while raising critical social issues, – the camera is used as a documenting tool as well as the catalyst of imagination.

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Project “I am Walé Respect Me” is about the initiation ritual of Ekonda pygmies, devoted to the main event in a young mother’s life – having her first child. A woman, who is called Walé and typically 15-18 years old, must spend several years living with her parents in isolation from the rest of the society. At the end of her exile a special ritual accompanied by traditional dances and song is performed. The series of pictures is the result of a collaboration between the photographer, the pygmy tribe, the young mothers, an ethno-musicologist, and the locals of Congo. “I have always admired these tribes as they are wealthy in the way that’s no longer known to us”, – Patrick says.

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