From Rafał Milach's "Winners" series, courtesy of the artist
The Polish photographer is among ten laureates of the Magnum Photo Agency's Emergency Fund. Milach plans to use the grant to continue his Winners series in Belarus, an intimate look at everyday life for people in "the last dictatorship in Europe"
Magnum Emergency Fund grants were started in 2009, and each year award up to $12,000 for the production, guidance, financing and distribution of photography projects about under-reported issues and communities, as conceived by ten of the world's promising young talents. The programme was started in response to diminshing opportunities for young photographers to create large-scale projects in the field. Topics engaging this year's laureates include the environmental impact on fragile ecosystems, ways of life in crime-ridden areas of the world, immigration across Europe and areas of political or economic strife. Most projects had already been initiated by the photographers, and the Magnum grant gives them the opportunity to return to these communities to continue their work.
"We want to look at the world and to ask, What don’t we know about?" says Magnum Foundation President Susan Meiselas. "What don’t we see enough of? How do we expose issues to the public that are over the horizon, anticipating places that we may come to read the headlines about in the near future? The EF has a deep commitment to the documentation of these under-reported issues — to cover them sooner rather than waiting for the crisis to brew and become urgent."
Rafał Milach's Winners series uses official propaganda in Belarus to depict the hypocrisy of Europe's last dictatorship, where slogans of protest on city walls are covered up with geometric swaths of paint in a style that can recall Mark Rothko's iconic canvases. Milach's portraits focus on winners of various national competitions of strength and endurance. Photos in the series have been published in the album Stand by, by Sputnik Photos.
Born in Gliwice, Poland, in 1978, Milach graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2003 and the Institute of Creative Photography (ITF) in Opava, Czech Republic. With ten other Central Eastern European (CEE) photographers, Milach created the photo collective Sputnik Photos in 2004, to document, promote and spread knowledge on transition issues in CEE countries. His upbringing in Poland under communism sparked a fascination with political and social change that, as he said in an interview with modernphoto.eu, shaped his "view of the world as a photographer. Never mind if it’s the descending Silesia or young Russians living in post-soviet Russia". Milach captures realities of everyday life in Russia and former Soviet republics as authentically as possible. His first-person narration style is straightforward, without significant interference with the subject or setting.
At the Month of Photography in Bratislava in 2012, Milach's 7 Rooms were announced the best contemporary books in the CEE Region this year, along with two other albums published by Sputnik Photos, Stand By and Distant Place. His album In the Car with R has been nominated in the U.S. for photo-eye magazine’s Best Books of 2012 award. He received first prize in the Grand Press Photo competition in 2008 and in 2011 he received an honourable mention in the Magnum Expression Award Competition.
Magnum Photos was founded in 1947 by four photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour - scarred by recent wars and conflicts, and motivated both by a sense of relief that the world had survived and the need to see what was still there. They created Magnum to reflect their independent natures as people and photographers, and that idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist continues to define Magnum, emphasizing not only what is seen but also the way one sees it.
The laureates of the 2013 Magnum Emergency Fund grant are:
- Adam Nadel, for Getting the Water Right
- Alex Welsh, for Home of the Brave
- Giulio Piscitelli, for From There to Here
- Jehad Nga, for Unmasking the Unthinkable
- Mari Bastashevski, for State Business
- Olga Kravets, for Radicalization
- Rafal Milach, for The Winners
- Tanya Habjouqa, for Occupied Pleasures
- Philippe Dudouit, for The Dynamics of Dust
- Tomoko Kikuchi, for The River
See more on the winners and their projects: timelightbox.tumblr.com
Sources: lightbox.time.com, inmotion.magnumphotos.com
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart