PROFIFOTO

 
The ProfiFoto New Talent Award 22/1 - powered by Canon - recorded a record participation with 8,135 pictures from 738 photographers. The jury chose photographer Katerina Belkina for first place in the Best-of-Best.

The award winner (belkina.art), who lives near Berlin, traces the coordinate system of typical city dwellers with her two-room apartment project, which she created between 2017 and 2020. Katerina Belkina: “I have lived in two-room apartments for more than half my life. The world is becoming more and more open, and yet our lives are becoming more and more isolated. It seems compressed to the size of a small apartment. The body's range of motion is limited to one or two spaces and the path between them. Each day begins with a specific ritualized sequence of actions. The mind simultaneously solves global geopolitical conflicts, takes part in information and real wars, experiences economic crises, travels the world, communicates with people from all over the world and processes a vast amount of information about people and places that we do not know. It travels the world and communicates with others regardless of physical distance. We often participate passively in the life of the world community, and our participation, unlike us, has no geographical boundaries. It is precisely this dissonance that increasingly divides us into two separate spaces – the mind and the body.”

The photographs that formed the basis of each individual work of the project were taken in one corner or another of Katerina Belkina's apartment, where she spends most of her daily life. In a video accompanying the project, one can observe her everyday activities, which, as she says herself, appear as if seen through the window of the house opposite. “Like an astronaut in you

On the spaceship, I wake up and start my daily routine: I work, do my chores, take care of my family, and then I'm on my spacewalk in the orbit of the internet, connected to the rest of the world, and able to settle down , while absorbing information, observing the lives of others, and contemplating serious social issues. It's so trivial and so strange at the same time. Thirty years ago the world was very different. This time seems to be a turning point,” says the photographer, who knew early on that she had an extraordinary talent for seeing the world through different eyes.

Born in Samara in south-eastern European Russia, she was raised in a creative atmosphere by her mother, a visual artist. Her training as a painter at the art academy and, from 2000, at the Michael Musorin Academy for Photography in Samara gave her the tools to visualize her ideas. Exhibitions of her mystical self-portraits followed in Moscow and Paris. In 2007 Katerina Belkina was nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize (comparable to the British Turner Prize) in Moscow and was awarded the Hasselblad Masters Award. She currently lives and works near Berlin in Werder (Havel).

 

NEW TALENT AWARD
Twice a year, the New Talent Award, organized by Canon and ProfiFoto in cooperation with the photo agency Laif and Whitewall, offers photographers the chance to find support in realizing their “images in their heads”. The concept, which was further developed from the >Canon Profifoto Förderpreis<, opens up the competition for the numerous career changers in professional photography. Anyone who works professionally in photography or related professional groups can take part, regardless of their age and whether full-time or part-time. The award, which is endowed with 3,000 euros annually, is awarded every six months by a renowned jury to five applicants whose photographic style is convincing and whose concepts arouse curiosity for more. The jury selects the three best works from the total of ten winning works in the two competition sections each year. They will receive cash prizes totaling 3,000 euros (1st place 1,500, 2nd place 1,000 euros, 3rd place 500 euros). Further information and conditions of participation: www.profifoto.de