Photography enthusiasts with a wide range of works were awarded at this month’s Kolga Tbilisi Photo festival, as winning series and individual shots showing political struggle, climate change effects and other moments were singled out for honours in the capital city.

Organisers revealed the judges’ selection of the most distinguished participants throughout the past week, when the final display of the festival was also opened.

The juries were tasked with identifying their favourites as the event aimed to be “exceptional for the number of powerful photography projects covering a wide range of topics”.

Fausto Podavini secured the Documentary Series category prize for his project And I Will Make the Rivers Dry, which portrays people of Kenya’s Turkana County and their relationship with Lake Turkana, the largest permanent lake in a desert, within climate change developments.

In the last decades, data from the Kenyan government show a clear tendency to increase the average temperatures in the whole Country and in the County of Turkana.

It’s in this context that the Turkana population had to look for alternatives to live: first shepherds, over the years, had to adapt to become fishermen.

The award for the Reportage Series went to Mustafa Hassouna, who covered a political and civil rights struggle in his work on the Palestinian Rights of Return Protests. The latter unfolded as hundreds of civilians were killed and many more injured by the Israeli military during the clash last year.

The jury used the Conceptual Series award to distinguish Kate Mellor, as her Topographies of the Image project viewed post-industrial architectural sites of major buildings by internationally recognised architects.

A mythology grew that architecture could change the fortunes of cities but this kind of building was also heavily criticized for becoming detached from the locality [...] The work reflects on the photographic reappearing in the aspect of the architecture.

The Best Portrait prize was claimed by Mikhail Grebenshikov and his photo titled Outline, with two other single-piece works, Nigel Dickinson’s Effigy Of Prime Minister Theresa May At Lewes Bonfire and Jelena Jankovic’s Selfie Culture, taking the Best One Shot award.

Lorenzo Mangialardi was honoured with the award for the festival’s Mobile Series prize for his black-and-white work I Entrust My Soul to You, an emotionally difficult series of photographs taken during his mother’s ongoing struggle against cancer.

Agenda.ge