BACKLIGHT 02 AWARD

to Martin Kollar of Slovakia and Alexander Honory of Germany.

Given the overall quality, ambition and scope of the Backlight 02 exhibition, my work as juror was as rewarding and exciting as it was challenging and difficult. The organizers are to be congratulated for realizing an event of this standard, as are the participating artists to be congratulated for the dedication, skill and aesthetic and ethical integrity they put forth and shared with us viewers in this exhibition. In fact, it has been a pleasure to collaborate with the friendly and efficient staff of Backlight 02; rare it is to be met with such combined professionalism, competence and clearly profiled goals for one's project.

In the same manner, it has been a professional and personal privilege to become acquainted with the artists of Backlight 02, partaking in the powerful and engaged that they have generously shared with us. Backlight is setting a new standard for juried exhibitions and international collaboration of this kind. This year's backlight is a success and its future is immensely promising.

Again, given the high standard of work, after all deliberations were made, the price turned out to be a tie. In the end, the work of two of the participating artists proved inseparable in terms of quality. Thus Backlight 02 will be shared between Martin Kollar of Slovakia and Alexander Honory of Germany.

For Martin Kollar, the jury submits the following motivation:

Martin Kollar has an eye of extraordinary powers and precision. With the street as his preferred space, he is able to generate imagery of rare perfection, humour and human insight. Chosen and photographed with great care, quick ability to respond to reality as it unfolds in front of you, and with a sense of timing and composition that seems to be infallible, he allows us to encounter moments of the everyday; everyday moments which quickly turn extraordinary in the photographs of Kollar.

Each photograph of Kollar takes us through a particular moment in the photographed peoples lives; rendered with just as much sensitivity towards the individual as towards the overall culture. These are cultural portraits as much as they are scenes from the lives of particular individuals. Street-photography is reborn in the work of Kollar, whose world is limned with both sadness, joy, laughter and warm-hearted irony.

Alexander Honory’s One World Many Faces is an ambitious undertaking and a fascinating project. The project is clearly conceived, formally acute and well thought out; and carried out with great precision and formidable technical skill. Yet, while conceptually sharp, the single images, the portraits, in the work of Honory, remain indexes of remarkably real and sustained encounters with individuals, with people, with persons; a noticeable feat given the number of portraits taken. Interestingly, the project also set up a evocative charge not only between viewer and model, but also between the still and the moving image. Certainly, Honory's work also mirrors our layered and many-faceted societies of today; as he photographs a Family of Man for the 21st Century.

In addition to the shared award, the juror issues as well two honorary mentions, to Marcos Lopez, Argentina and to Marja Pirilä, Finland.

The honorary mentions is a way to name and recognize two photographic projects charged with superb personal vision; works creating their own visual worlds with their own characteristic, laws and qualities. Formally skilled, technically inventive, but most of all humanly and emotionally and existentially charged and challenging.

Thank  you.

Jan-Erik Lundström