Author: Benrido Collotype

Once again the contest has attracted entries from an astonishing array of accomplished artists. It is with great pleasure that we announce this year’s winners, and invite you to sample their work through the images below.

Statement by Takumi Suzuki, CEO Benrido

As we announce this year’s winners of the HARIBAN AWARD, it is my pleasure to note the enthusiasm which the contest, now in its fourth year, continues to generate among photographers internationally. The judges’ task was made ever more difficult by the unprecedented number of outstanding submissions, 439 entries in all, from all over the world. Among them, the extraordinary work of this year’s winner, Stephen Gill, stands out for its depth, mystery, and visual effects, which uncannily bridges the gap between the subject and its image.

Stephen Gill, this year’s HARIBAN AWARD winner, is a London native now residing in rural South Sweden. Immersed in photography and fascinated by the world around him from early youth, he photographed his East London surroundings extensively before moving to Sweden and pursuing dramatically differents subjects. His winning Night Procession series evokes the mystery of the forest at night, by challenging us to see the unseen. I look forward with interest to seeing Stephen’s vision expressed in the collotype medium.

Please enjoy a few photos selected from the Juror’s Choice, Master Printer’s Choice, and Honorable Mention winning portfolios.

Paul Cupido

Leticia Ramos

Maurice Sectheltens & Liesbeth Abbenes

Zeng Ge

What’s next?

Stephen Gill will be traveling to Kyoto to begin his/her residency here at Benrido. Be sure to stay tuned for updates on our blog so you can follow along with his journey. We want you to be there to share in the experience of visiting Kyoto. And of course, you’ll want to see how his collaboration with us progresses.

The story has only just begun—sign up for our email list to stay in the loop!

It’s that time of year again! We’re thrilled to announce the shortlist for HARIBAN AWARD 2017. We received an incredible 439 submissions from all over the globe! Our judges had the difficult task of paring down a truly impressive array of work, but they’re confident that they’ve selected the submissions that will benefit most from a relationship with Benrido and the collotype process. Check out the shortlist below.

Statement by Tristan Lund

Selecting the shortlist for the HARIBAN AWARD 2017 has been a privilege and a task I undertook extremely seriously. I would like to thank all the entrants, those at the beginning of their careers for the bravery to show their work to an unknown audience and to those more established striving to push their practice to a new level.

This is a unique award with a prize that is a genuine collaboration with highly skilled craftspeople, it is an incredible opportunity for the right kind of artist. I approached the shortlisting process with this in mind by looking for:

• A sense that each artist had carefully considered why they were entering such a specific award.
• Individual images that I thought would look great as collotypes.
• Original, consistent projects ranging in style and content.

I am delighted with the list of 111 finalists and think we have a fantastic group of artists from which to select a winner, I am very excited about the next stage.

The final award winners will be selected from this pool of photographers and their names will be announced in late-August. This year’s panel of jurors is made up of Michael Famighetti, Tristan Lund, Thyago Nogueira, and Rong Rong & Inri, all highly esteemed members of the global photography community. Want to receive the latest updates? Sign up for the HARIBAN AWARD newsletter.

Please enjoy some of the work from this year’s shortlist. We selected the following in order to share with you the diversity in subject and style of the submitted works — they are not meant to represent winning submissions.

Zeng Ge

Herman Wouters

Kazuma Obara

Philip LePage

We are very excited to introduce this year’s Hariban Award winners! It was a real pleasure looking at the amazing submissions we received from around the world. The quality of work we receive continues to raise the bar on what we’ve come to expect from the talented and creative artists who enter this competition. Check out the list of winners below:

Statement by Takumi Suzuki, CEO Benrido

I couldn’t be more pleased with this year’s Hariban Award winner. We again received hundreds of stunning submissions from around the globe. I know how difficult it was for our judges to choose just one winner but it was an enjoyable process for them, getting to see the talent of our entrants. There was one submission that stood head and shoulders above the rest. Claudio Silvano’s winning portfolio is a testament to his creativity and artistic vision.

Claudio grew up in Brazil and recently moved to France and his photos reflect that feeling of displacement. His shots of nature contrast with those of urban scenery, perhaps tracing his own journey in life. Claudio has a rare eye for capturing the artistry of nature and I am looking forward to having him join us at Benrido in Kyoto to see what the collotype process can further bring out his vision. I hope you will follow along with Claudio as he begins his adventure in collotype, learns a new culture, and attends Kyotographie where he’ll see his winning prints on display.

Please enjoy a few photos selected from the Juror’s Choice, Master Printer’s Choice, and Honorable Mention winning portfolios.

Claudio Nolasco

Michael Vahrenwald

Maria do Mar Rego

Maria Inglessis

What’s next?

Claudio Silvano will be traveling to Kyoto to begin his/her residency here at Benrido. Be sure to stay tuned for updates on our blog so you can follow along with his journey. We want you to be there to share in the experience of visiting Kyoto. And of course, you’ll want to see how his collaboration with us progresses.

The story has only just begun—sign up for our email list to stay in the loop!

The time has come to announce this year’s Hariban Award competition finalists! We received an incredible 200 submissions from all over the globe. With so many impressive submissions to consider, our judge put a lot of thought into choosing the submission that will benefit most from a relationship with Benrido and the collotype process. Check out the shortlists below.

The winners will be selected from this pool of photographers and their names will be announced in August. This year’s panel of jurors is made up of Peter Barberie, Mariko Takeuchi, and Marc Feustel, all highly regarded members of the global photography community. To receive the latest updates, sign up for the Hariban Award newsletter.

Statement by Tsuyoshi Ito

Every year, the caliber of submissions for this award gets ever more impressive, and it is getting harder to choose finalists. This year brought a huge amount of talent and passion with entrants from all over the world. Though selecting our finalists was a difficult process, it was highly rewarding to see the creativity and beauty of the submitted works.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this round of judging and I look forward to seeing the decisions of the other jurors.

Please enjoy a preview of a few of this year’s submissions. We selected the following in order to share with you the diversity in subject and style of the submitted works – they are not meant to represent winning submissions.

Peter Finnemore

Elin O’Hara Slavick

Mathieu Christine

Linda Roodenburg

It is our honor to introduce you to the winners of the 2015 Hariban Award competition! We saw an incredible amount of high-quality work from a pool of entrants almost twice as large as last year, making the decisions even more difficult for our esteemed jurors. The Major Award recipient of this year’s competition, Anthony Cairns, will be flown to Kyoto for two weeks to work side by side with the highly skilled master printers at the Benrido Atelier. Explore the list of winners below!

Statement by Takumi Suzuki, CEO Benrido

Today I am truly happy to announce the final results of the Hariban Award Competition. I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone who submitted from around the globe, contributing to a wide and diverse range of work. Although I am not a juror myself, as CEO of the Benrido Atelier I have come to understand how difficult it can be to pick and choose from a pool of such high-quality submissions. I have also seen how rarely every member of a panel has the same opinion of a photographer’s work. Having said that, this year we had one particularly unique and exemplary submission that received unanimous praise and recognition. That submission was the work of Anthony Cairns.

While his pictures muse on the contemporary city, they are also thick with a sense of memory and the ephemeral. Very much like the city of Kyoto, the sharpness of modernity and the haze of the past coexist in tandem. For this and many other reasons I am thrilled to see the results of his collaboration with us and the collotype process at the the Atelier. We hope to show his collotype prints in a different venue than last year’s iteration and explore the new possibilities that his aesthetic holds. I hope you look forward to seeing the progress of our work together, and that this encourages you to submit again or for the first time next year!

What’s next?

We’ll keep you updated with all the latest news and developments as the winner travels to Kyoto for the start of this incredible experience. You’ll hear about how he settles into our ancient city and the culture of Japan as well as the the progress of our collaborative work with the collotype process.

The story has only just begun—sign up for our email list to stay in the loop!

The time has come to announce the first round of selected photographers from this year’s Hariban Award competition! We received almost twice as many submissions as last year from photographers all around the globe, each one contributing to a highly talented and promising pool of entrants. Picking and choosing the work that will benefit most from a relationship with Benrido and the collotype process was no easy task. Explore the first round of selections below!

Statement by Tsuyoshi Ito

It has been incredibly rewarding and exciting to review the large volume of submissions that we received this year from all around the globe. In selecting the first round of photographers for the 2015 Hariban Award, I kept a number of criteria in mind. First and foremost, I am interested in a marriage of form and content. I chose work that was not just descriptive but also formally suited for the collotype process.

In addition, the selected photographs have a clear interpretation of the photographers world view. I chose work that offered me an invitation into that world. Black and white can be a very personal and expressive medium, and I enjoy work that explores those possibilities furthest. I believe this group of photographers presents a strong potential for collaboration with the Benrido Atelier and look forward to the remainder of the process.

The winners, announced in August, will be chosen from these names. The panel of jurors consists of Michael Hoppen, Amanda Maddox, Lucille Reyboz, and Tsuyoshi Ito, each a distinguished member of the international photography community. To receive the latest update, sign up for Hariban Award newsletters.

What’s important to you about the process of making work by hand?

Awoiska: Each image is born out of a devotion to my surroundings, and handling the analog materials by hand, with great care, is intertwined with respect for the subject or situations in where I immerse myself, and then photograph. Being able to see my works treated with this special and rare reproduction technique made me very excited. The idea of seeing many different layers of ink forming depth and new details, creating a new experience of the photo, made me very eager to see them reproduced as collotypes.

Tell us one moment or experience from your time in Kyoto that stands out in your mind.

Awoiska:It was definitely the emotional moment when I said goodbye to the printers, the Benrido staff and the interpreter. My stay in Kyoto was all about producing artworks, which could not have been done without collaborating with the printers. We worked together very intensely for two weeks to get the prints done in time. This work created a strong bond between us, and there is no better base than that when you make good artwork together. Working at the Benrido Atelier has also brought me new ideas and possibilities for my work.

What was the most surprising aspect of learning collotype printing?

Awoiska:The digital part! What an enrichment to increase the possibilities of this traditional technique with a digital step: scanning the negative or using directly a digital file. With this file a new negative film sheet is created and defines the final size of the collotype print. Without this we never could have made collotypes of my works at the size of 60×50 cm. I have great admiration for the Benrido Atelier choosing to do so: making this technique more accessible for all kinds of image makers.

Do you think you will continue working with this kind of process in your future work?

Awoiska:I am definitely working on a plan to come back to collaborate with the Benrido collotype atelier again. Naoko Ohta wrote: ‘In Japan the collotype process is used to print mostly holy objects such as calligraphies and sutra manuscripts. Collotypes have the power to produce the depth and detail of these works faithfully, awakening the hidden messages and spirits within them.’ To me this corresponds so well with my artistic work: when I photograph I want to experience a sense of some existence beyond our field of vision. At this moment I am making new photo works in Japan, and I hope that these will be finalized in collotype printing.

I understand that you usually work alone. How do you feel like your experiences collaborating at the Benrido Collotype Atelier will influence your future work?

Awoiska:It was a good experience having to define very precisely how I’d like my images to be printed in order to experience them the way I wanted. Communicating this through an interpreter and applying a new technique made it quite challenging, but it created a perfect result. Along the way, I learned to see my work through the eyes of the artisan printers. I had to let go of the way I usually see my photographs and start to see how the collotype technique can enrich with depth, detail and an enormous sensitivity of the material – which changes the final image. After my two-week stay at the Benrido Atelier, we had finished the perfect test prints needed as examples for the final prints. The artisan printers produced the final prints without me being present. I have to admit this felt impossible: how do I leave this final process up to others? Well, the result is marvelous and I have learned for the future that it is possible to turn over printmaking to others, if you trust their understanding of your work.

Awoiska’s collotype prints, which she worked on during her time at the Benrido Collotype Atelier, will be exhibited during Kyotographie 2015, at the Kouseiin from April 18-22 and at the Kyoto Hotel Okura from April 23-May 10.

Hariban Award 2015 Details

Grand Prize Winner

Awoiska van der Molen — www.awoiska.nl

The 2014 jury chose Dutch photographer Awoiska van der Molen as the grand prize winner. Awoiska spent two weeks in Kyoto in 2014 working with collotype masters, and her resulting images will be displayed this April at the Kyotographie, an international photography festival in Kyoto. In the video below, Awoiska describes her experiences at the atelier.

Bio

Awoiska Van der Molen is known for her monochrome landscapes, which in her words “arise out of a desire to penetrate deeply into the core of the isolated world in which she photographs.” In 2011 she was the finalist at the Hyères Photography Festival in France and in the same year she won the Alt. + 1000 prize at the Festival de la Photography de la Montagne, Rossinière, Switzerland. Her first monograph ‘Sequester’ published in 2014 was awarded the Silver Medal at the ‘Best Book from All Over the World’ competition. Awoiska van der Molen is represented by Kristof De Clercq Gallery, Ghent (BE) and Purdy Hicks Gallery, London (UK). Currently based in Amsterdam and Umbria, Italy.

Juror’s Statement

“Awoiska van der Molen was a strong choice for the Grand Prize of the Hariban Award 2014, and richly deserves the exciting opportunity to work with the skilled technicians at Benrido. Her work is among the finest contemporary black and white photography being produced in Europe at the moment, and her own print-making of an exceptionally high quality. But it is also true to say that in her exquisite images of nature especially, through her close attention to the play of light and shadow have much in common with some of the historic masterpieces produced as collotypes at Benrido.” — Simon Baker (Curator of Photography/International Art, Tate Modern)

Special Prize Winners

The jury awarded three photographers special recognition for their excellent work. These photographers will have their work published in the Collotype catalog.

• Antony Cairns: London-based photographer Antony Cairns, who spends most of his time photographing the city, has a practice deeply rooted in exploring the boundaries and fragility of chemical-based photography.
• Marco van Duyvendijk: Marco van Duyvendijk has traveled through Eastern Europe and Asia making work, and in 2014 published a photo book about Riko, a butoh dancer in Kyoto.
• Tenmi Hanagi: Tenmi Hanagi, a self-taught artist, has exhibited her work solo since 2003, mainly in Tokyo.

Other Recognitions

Six additional photographers received honorable mentions.

• Zen Teh
• Dongwook Lee
• Yutaka Matsubara
• Hiroyoshi Inoue
• Dana Fritz
• Brett Henrikson

Hariban Award 2015 Details