British photographer Andy Hall wins the Open Call “Project selection by Harry Gruyaert” and wins the title of Best Author!
His project “Tales of The City” was personally chosen by the renowned Magnum photographer from over 400 entries and will be displayed in an exclusive exhibition during the Trieste Photo Days 2025. With “Tales of The City,” Hall explores urban life through images evocative and refined compositions, offering a unique portrait of the metropolitan landscape.
Harry Gruyaert also awarded the title of “Artistic Recognition” to three other authors who impressed him with the quality of their work:
- Mark Zhu (China) – Chinatowns
- Olivia Rotondo (Italy) – Whales Fly Merrily.
- Shunta Kimura (Japan) – The Chronicle of US
In addition to the solo exhibition, Andy Hall will receive the following awards:
- Personalized trophy created by Biennale artist Giorgio Celiberti (value €800)
- Two nights stay for two people in Trieste
- Live talk on the 2025 festival programme
- Publication in the festival catalogue
- Online promotion on social media
- 15,000 PhotoPoints (€150 value)
Here are the words with which Harry Gruyaert motivated the final choice:
“I chose this work because it’s the kind of photo I’d love to have taken myself. I know this type of London neighborhood well—I’ve photographed around the Business District, and this project captures the atmosphere perfectly. His compositions stand out; he’s pulling order from chaos, and some images are truly powerful, even if they don’t all reach the same level.
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The City of London’s financial district known as the Square Mile is a City within a City answering to no one but mammon. My photography of this area is an exploration of the Psychogeography of this fabled place, and how it’s inhabitants relate to their environment; the mixed landscape of narrow streets and alleyways next to ancient buildings juxtaposed with big intersections over-looked by shiny new glass monuments to 21st Century capitalism. I look at this area as a street photographer, capturing candid moments in the flow of human traffic around me. I try to look towards graphic, strongly-lit scenes – pockets of light and light reflections from windows hitting the pavements below, as figures, shadows and silhouettes mix on the streets.
Author’s biography
Andy Hall is a freelance editorial photographer based in London with 35 years experience working regularily all over the world working on commissions for a wide range of national and international magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian and the Observer, as well as for NGO’s such as UNHCR. His work on the hunger crisis in the Sahel region of Africa was screened at the Visa Pour L’Image festival of photojournalism in 2012. He is also a street photographer with a growing reputation and was one of the winners of the PDN sponsored Acuity Press “Best of Street Potography” 2016, and was recently a series finalist in the Brussels Street Photography Festival 2019, as well as being awarded Series Finalist in the Lensculture Street Awards 2021.
Instagram: @andyxhall
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Mark Zhu – Chinatowns
Web: www.mrk-z.com
Instagram: @mrkzpht
I left my native country of China at the age of 18, and have since lived in America and now in Europe. Wherever I go, I often find myself visiting the Chinatowns, as they are places where I can feel close to my culture.
However, visiting the Chinatowns has always been a somewhat bizarre or even disorienting experience for me. On the one hand, I’m able to find a variety of familiar elements related to the Chinese culture: authentic food from my region, store signs written in Chinese, or festive activities that my family used to do when I was little, etc. On the other hand, despite the name “Chinatown”, these neighborhoods are nothing like the modern China that I know: by merging Chinese and local cultures, they have greatly evolved and developed into their own cultural identities.
This series includes photos taken during my visits to various Chinatowns in America and Europe over the years. Through street photography, I intend to navigate these neighborhoods through two different perspectives: firstly, a more personal and nostalgic look, where I’m reacting to the familiar or the bizarre cultural elements, reflecting my own experience visiting the Chinatowns; secondly, a more objective point of view, where I’m interested in highlighting the fusion between cultures and how it has transformed the urban landscape in these places.
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Olivia Rotondo – Whales Fly Merrily.
Instagram: @olivia_round
The project was born during a trip to Iceland in 2017, to the West Fjords Region, a particularly remote and sparsely inhabited area of the Island.
Observing a very intimate everyday life within such an immense space and dilated time led me to investigate this sort of oxymoron.
I tried to tell the story of how the landscape and animals from presence became characters, in an inseparable relationship between people and natural elements.
Whales fly merrily.
The Icelandic landscape is a great exercise in poetry.
It is powerful, exuberant, poignant.
Iceland is a primordial land, fleeting and constantly moving.
Fire never stops shaping it.
The water breathes, snorts and sneezes.
Blue ices migrate stubbornly towards the black beaches.
Whales fly lightly in the sea, and terns dive fearlessly in the air.
The dishevelled manes of the horses and the hanging laundry dance in unison with the wind.
The dawn weaves enchanted and arcane plots.
Day cannot resist night.
The gaze cannot find the horizon.
Those who live here know that nature conquers all, creates and destroys.
They live in symbiosis with that immeasurable enchantment.
They are intimately forged by it in his thoughts, gestures and glances.
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Shunta Kimura – The Chronicle of US
Web: shuntakimura-photography.com
Instagram: @kimurashunta
This ongoing project, “The Chronicle of Us” aims to record one of the histories of the 21st century through the story of climate migrations worldwide and people who are likely to be forced to flee from their hometowns due to the impacts of climate change.
The 20th century is called “the century of refugees,” the vast number of people were forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, genocide, persecution, and political or religious reasons.
In addition to those reasons, large-scale migration in the 21st century is also caused by the impacts of climate change in all sorts of places in the world, and it has rapidly increased at an unprecedented scale beyond our imagination since the beginning of this century.
As of the end of 2023, approximately 26.4 million climate migrants are forced to leave their hometowns due to the impacts of unusual weather events such as intensifying tropical cyclones, monsoon rainfalls, massive floods, severe drought, rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, wildfire, and heatwaves, and many of them have been inflicted severe and long-term financial and mental burdens after migration even though they are seeking a safe and secure life.
From now on, there will be an increasing number of them if it is not addressed immediately by people’s hands before it becomes irreversible, and this century will be called “the century of climate migration” in the future.
I aim to record the flow of the history of the 21st century through this project, which consists of photo stories of six chapters and over ten thousand portraits of climate migrants.
Each chapter is divided by region, each with the characteristics of climate change impacts: chapter 1 is about South-Southeast Asia and the Pacific regions, chapter 2 is about Central Asia and the Middle Eastern regions, chapter 3 is about the European region, chapter 4 is about the African region, chapter 5 is about the North American region, and chapter 6 is about Latin America.
This time, I will show the peoples’ lives and portraits of climate migrants in South-southeast Asia and the Pacific region as a part of the project.
