Pictures of our time

The Leica Oskar Barnack Award is an annual international photography prize given to two photographers by the German camera maker. Meet this year’s winners

Art and Design 16 Nov 2022

Between the Years - Valentin Goppel

Between the Years - Valentin Goppel

A trip to Leica’s HQ in Wetzlar, Germany, is a little like visiting a university campus where the only course on the syllabus concerns photography and the critical part played in its development by Leica.

A hotel, conference hall, museum, gallery and factory are all rendered in substantial Modernist style. What this place resembles on an average weekday is a matter of speculation – I imagine a trickle of enthusiasts making a pilgrimage to the home of the birth of 35mm photography. But once a year, during the LOBA (Leica Oskar Barnack Award) event, it’s a grey concrete hive of activity, swarming with photographers and journalists, here to see the presentation of the annual Leica awards for photography, named after Oskar Barnack, the inventor, in 1921, of the 35mm camera, which would become Leica’s revolutionary device.

Last month the 2022 LOBA event took place. It was the 42nd edition of the international photographic competition. As usual, it was a competition judged by a jury, who reviewed a number of entries all nominated by photography experts. Also as usual, there were two winners: one for the main category and one for a newcomer. Their series, along with the entries of the 10 other 2022 shortlisted nominees, will be on display at the Ernst Leitz Museum in Leitz-Park, Wetzlar, until January 2023.

This year the newcomer prize went to 22-year-old German Valentin Goppel, whose Between the Years portfolio documents his experience and that of his friends during lockdown. His exploration of how the pandemic affected young people is candid, suggesting a twilight existence of disorientation, but also of support and friendship. ‘I tried to give my generation a face that conveys how we have felt during the past two years,’ he says.

Between the Years portfolio by Valentin Goppel
Between the Years portfolio by Valentin Goppel

Goppel took to his camera to help him understand his feelings and fears about what was happening. Shot mainly in low light, often at night, the pictures have a rich cinematic quality that makes them both a comment on a type of dystopian existence but also a study in societal survival.

‘The pandemic was an exceptional situation for all of us,’ says Goppel. ‘We were suddenly fighting against demons, which we had held back by means of familiar distractions. It is amazing how similar the experiences of these past years were for me and my friends – and, yet, we all felt so alone. My state of limbo drags on.’

Between the Years portfolio by Valentin Goppel
Between the Years portfolio by Valentin Goppel

If Goppel’s frame of reference is confined to a relatively short time period and small circle of friends, the winner of the main category, Iranian-Canadian Kiana Hayeri, plays with a much more expansive canvas.

Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun is a series of images curated from Hayeri’s seven years living and working as a photographer in Afghanistan. Only one of the images was taken post the western withdrawal from the country in August 2021, which gives them a powerful poignancy. These pictures are mainly concerned with the living conditions of women in Afghanistan, and serve as a fascinating insight into the fragile development of education for women, the freedom of expression they embraced, and women’s rights that flowered in Afghanistan over two decades. It took years, it seems, to establish these things and only a matter of days to destroy them. As Hayeri says, ‘Last summer, we all watched in disbelief as 20 years of progress in freedom of expression, women’s rights and education were wiped away in 20 days, as the country rapidly fell into the hands of the Taliban’.

Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun by Kiana Hayeri
Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun by Kiana Hayeri

Hayeri’s photographs capture the character of her subjects and their relationships with one another in the rich colours of the region and its clear, bright light. A women’s prison scene looks surprisingly cheerful and domestic, the inmates clearly possessing a sense of mutual support, while young girls crowd together in a classroom to enjoy the experience of study and learning.

Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun by Kiana Hayeri
Written on the Ice, Left in the Sun by Kiana Hayeri

‘My work focuses on Afghan women, the same women who were put at the centre of war efforts to liberate them shortly after the Americans invaded Afghanistan,’ says Hayeri. ‘Today, many of these women feel that they have been abandoned and left behind. Afghanistan is a place of extremes, where the best and the worst of humanity live side by side. Fear and courage, despair and hope, life and death coexist.’

Despite the situation in Afghanistan, having left the country last August, Hayeri has now returned to live in Kabul and continue her work. ‘Afghanistan is still a country with open wounds that is struggling to heal,’ she says. It seems that she is determined to be there to document whatever now happens.

leicaoskarbarnackaward.com