Matt Black chooses the first exhibition of Trieste Photo Days 2026!
The Hound by Ian Willms wins the “2025 Online Project Selection”
Canadian photographer Ian Willms is the winner of the Online Projects Selection 2025, one of the most anticipated awards of the 12th edition of Trieste Photo Days. The announcement was made on Sunday, October 26, at Sala Xenia, by Matt Black, Magnum Photos photographer and guest of honour at the festival, who selected the best project from over 400 submissions from around the world.
Willms’ project, titled The Hound, is a visual and narrative journey along America’s highways, following the trail of the legendary Greyhound, the intercity bus that has traversed the continent and its contradictions for more than a century. Originally created as a transport service for iron miners, Greyhound Lines has become an icon of American popular culture: a symbol of freedom, but also a witness to social inequality, shattered dreams, and the invisible daily struggles of the working class. Through photography marked by deep human sensitivity, Willms builds a mosaic of stories: travellers in search of work, redemption, love, or simply a place to start over. In his images, the neon lights of bus stations blend with the shadows of the night, in a continuous interplay of dream and reality, hope and disillusion. The Hound is a tale of the road and survival, a collective portrait of marginalised America, observed with both empathy and precision.
With this victory, Ian Willms earns a solo exhibition, which will be produced, curated, and presented at the thirteenth edition of Trieste Photo Days in 2026.
Author’s biography
Born in 1985, Ian Willms is a Canadian documentary photographer and a member of Panos Pictures, one of the world’s leading photojournalism agencies. His long-term projects explore themes such as Indigenous sovereignty, ecological destruction, forgotten genocides, and the psychological toll of the pandemic era. A descendant of a family that fled persecution in Ukraine a century ago, Willms draws his deep empathy from personal and communal experiences of social hardship, poverty, discrimination, and human fragility. This sensitivity strongly informs his work, which combines journalistic rigor with emotional intensity. As a freelance photojournalist, he has collaborated with major international outlets including National Geographic, The New York Times, TIME, GEO, New York Magazine, The Guardian Weekly, and many others. His work has received support and recognition from prestigious institutions such as the Eugene Smith Fund, World Press Photo, Sony World Photography Awards, Pictures of the Year International, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Lange-Taylor Prize, and has been exhibited in galleries and festivals worldwide.
Standout projects from the 2025 Online Project Selection
Alongside the winning project, six submissions rose to the very top of this year’s review and are being spotlighted by the festival:
- Distant Early Warning — Louie Palu
- Atlas of Third Eden — Giacomo Fusaro
- INT | EXT — Boris Suyderhoud
- bullets have no borders — Ebrahim Alipoor
- Sudan: In Time of War — Giles Clarke
- Apocalypse in Mariupol — Valery Melnikov
