Corona Call 2020
TOP TEN ENTRIES
We proudly present
the authors of the ten top rated entries:
ATTILA GAZSÓ … DILLON MARSH … GLORIA OYARZABAL … ILAN GODFREY … JONATHAN LIECHTI … MATTEO GARZONIO …MIGUEL FURTADO MARTINS …NICOLA BERTASI …TATENDA CHIDORA … URA ITURRALDE LARRAÑAGA
Boris von Brauchitsch
Call for Corona.
A competition regarding the pandemic
Corona and art? Exactly what we’ve been missing! Indeed. The global pandemic has stoked distrust between people and nations and sabotaged the economy, and so the time has come, for art to make itself felt and tell stories that connect all of us across continents.
The art project Sana Sanaa, which is dedicated to the creative exchange between Africa and Europe, has launched an international open call competition to take a photographic stand on Corona. An international jury has now published the 10 best rated entires from 578 submitted projects. They will first be presented (together with a selection from the 25 shortlisted works) at the Fahrbereitschaft Berlin-Lichtenberg in October before moving on to several African metropoles, come from Turkey, Switzerland, Cameroon, United Kingdom, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, France, South Africa, Germany, Zimbabwe, Italy, Senegal, Belgium and Portugal.
Insistent reports tell of grand quarantine measures and the use of doctors to the point of complete exhaustion, but also report on the military, which seems to have taken the “state of war” message proclaimed by some heads of state very seriously. In humorous productions, fears of contagion are satirised and naturally the immediate consequences of the lockdown take up an equally imposing and multi-faceted space. Retreat into loneliness, boom of the funeral directors, deserted city streets.
While in recent months one could occasionally have the impression that there is only one official opinion on Corona and a confused bunch of conspiracy believers, the Corona project of Sana Sanaa now reveals a variety of views on the pandemic and thus also becomes a non-verbal and differentiated exchange of ideas.
This is also due to the fact that the positions are close to the people, to the sun-hungry who discover their roofs as new leisure regions, to the senior citizens in old people’s homes who are only cared for by masked people, but also to the neighbours who remained strangers for years and now, in a community of fate, come together emotionally and in solidarity.
The result of the competition exceeded all expectations. Perhaps the reason for the large participation was also the much-vaunted deceleration that Corona brought with it. The high quality of the contributions, however, is certainly due to the fact that all of the photographers are not reporting on anything, not only taking part, but are themselves part of the event.
Everyone seems to have realised that Corona is not only an event of historical dimensions, but that for once the whole world is facing the same problem. This is exactly what makes the pictures universally readable and understandable.
The covid-19 pandemic took a serious effect on the everyday life of my family. As a father of four the closing of schools and daycares, home education and generally the long closeness was a great challenge, while working in one of the biggest shopping centre of Europe my job and with this, the main income of my family was in danger.
MoreAttila Gazsó (Hungary)
Lockdown Diary
Fever Dream is an ongoing photographic series that is part artwork and part therapeutic outlet. I started producing these images towards the end of 2019, a few months before the Coronavirus outbreak started. At first, the driving force behind this project was my growing malaise stemming from my distrust of humanity’s ability to take care of itself and the planet we live on. Lurid colours and dystopian undertones permeate the images in response to these feelings.
MoreIn 1845 Henry David Thoreau leaves the family home in Concord and settles in the cabin he has built next to the Walden Lagoon to “live life intensely from beginning to end”. Walden, Thoreau said, “is a book written for that majority of men and women who are unhappy with their lives and the times they have had to live through, but who could improve them.
MoreOn March 17, 2020, the Swiss government declared the “extraordinary situation” and tightened measures against the spread of the new coronavirus. Distance rules were introduced to protect the population and private contacts were to be kept to a minimum. Where we had previously crossed the doorstep as a matter of course, we were left with noticeable uncertainty.
More“You, unknown neighbor, everyday up to the roof with your children and made me smile, despite the heavy, leaden mood that surrounded us.” In Milan, during this Covid-19 lockdown time, balconies, terraces and roofs have become the only useful places to get our yard time… we took a walk on the roofs transformed into gyms, solariums, libraries.
MoreA vida vivida de um Lar Residencial Senior em Lisboa. De repente, o mundo ficou de pernas para o ar. Apesar da ameaça, há muito latente, de um vírus conhecido, designado internacionalmente por Corona Vírus, ninguém parecia, ou melhor, ninguém estava preparado para enfrentar uma tal ameaça à escala global,
MoreWe have received mysterious postcards from the future, addressed to the citizens of our virulent times. They are stories of epidemics that affect our present and recent past on this planet. I put together the best clues and tried to rearrange the information. A message? A suggestion? A warning or a joke of the space-time dimension? Who cares. Here they are. There are ten of them, and more might arrive.
This work shows the daily life of cloistered nuns in the Basque Country, Spain, during the pandemic. AN OASIS INSIDE THE PANDEMIC They pray for us, for the ones that have lost their lives, for the end of the pandemic. Very little has changed in the daily life of cloistered nuns from Tolosa (Basque Country, Spain) whose days are strictly organised and scheduled.
More
Andreas Müller-Pohle
European Photography,
Berlin, Germany

Benjamin Füglister
CAP Prize & Association,
Berlin, Germany

Jack Yakubu Nkinzingabo
Kigali Center for Photography,
Kigali, Rwanda

Nyambura M. Waruingi
Akoia & Company,
Nairobi, Kenya

Romney Müller-Westernhagen
Sana Sanaa Representative
New York City, USA

Stephanie Blomkamp
Oath Magazine,
Cape Town, South Africa

Uche Okpa-Iroha
The Nlele Institute,
Lagos, Nigeria