Open Call: HERITAGE

2023 Winners and Finalists Announced!

‘Heritage’ is an exploration of the traditions, history, and practices that form nations and the people in them. This open call asks you to look at generations past and the influence both personally and as a collective. This heritage can be singularly experienced or broad and all encompassing. How does our past shape our present and future and in turn our art? What does ‘Heritage’ mean to you?

PORTRAIT

Jaír F. Coll: Star of Bethlehem

The ‘Star of Bethlehem’, Melany Márquez, 9, poses for a portrait on the main street of Quinamayó, Feb. 18, 2023.

Quinamayó is an Afro-Colombian community that celebrates Christmas in February, 45 days after the traditional date of Jesus’ birth. This timing is based on the period it took the Virgin Mary to rest after giving birth, which coincides with the time when enslaved people were given a rest period in mid-February.

Some children, like Melany, dress up as biblical characters to participate in a procession honoring the arrival of the Messiah.

Ousman Diallo: Taratantara: Two Spirits

In “Taratantara,” I interlace the threads of my West African ancestry with a tapestry of global spirituality and metaphysics, reflecting on life’s profound questions. Cloths from my mother and father become canvases, embodying the meditation on existence, and anchoring each piece in the rich soil of tradition. Through this melding of the personal with the universal, the project seeks to uncover the layers of meaning and purpose that unite us in our diverse experiences of life, death, and the ever-evolving human consciousness in the background of urban life.

Lukas Flippo: Kentucky Gothic

Levi Price, 6, (right) and Asher Moore, 5, (left) stand for a portrait after playing in mud June 19, 2023, in Berry, KY. Levi and Asher were watched by Brenna Price, who runs a babysitting business out of her home. Brenna’s husband, Ernie Price, works at the Kentucky Department of Transportation. They purchased their rural home for $10,000 from the local cemetery and renovated it piece by piece with the intention of raising their children with abundant open space in the tradition of their own upbringing, bucking the overwhelming trend of urbanization within traditionally rural states.

Dominique Jean-Marie: Cornrows

Wearing our hair braided is a form of art and expression. It is also a freedom, a powerful emotional emancipation. Cornrows is an ongoing portrait series that takes a contemporary look at the heritage of African braids, a hair practice dating back to prehistoric times. In Antiquity, the people of ancient Egypt and the Nok civilizations elevated the hair tradition of braids to the rank of works of art. Inspired by my childhood, this portrait offers a human and aesthetic look at the evolution and social acceptance of this cultural heritage.

O-Young Kwon: Fulani

Recurrent droughts and increasing desertification force traditional herding families to give up their nomadic life, losing a sense of identity in the process, accelerated by urbanization. Consequently the majority of Fulani have become sedentary over the last few centuries, but still leading a life in harmony with nature, to which they owe everything.

The photograph shows a Fulani boy in the border region of Ghana and Togo with teir herd of cows at sunrise, holding a smart phone in his hands.

Valery Poshtarov: Father and Son

The “Father and Son” project, featuring photographic portraits of fathers and adult sons holding hands, a simple yet powerful gesture, is an exploration of human connections and cultural heritage. Spanning diverse cultures, and reaching corners of 9 countries, the project highlights the singularity of identity shaped by family and cultural heritage. In these interactions, we see individual identities emerging within shared familial narratives, illustrating how deeply personal and culturally influenced our life paths are.

Badara Preira: SINGULARITY

At the heart of the excitement of the Layenne ceremony in Senegal, my photographic series “Singularity” explores the depths of human and spiritual uniqueness. Through the prism of the Muslim brotherhood of Layenne, known for its unique approach to faith and its choice of white symbolizing purity, this collection of photos aspires to celebrate the diversity of our individual journeys in a world too often inclined to uniformity. Each image is an ode to difference, a plea for self-acceptance in a society that sometimes views uniqueness with skepticism.

Why the fear of difference?

Guarionex Rodriguez: Untitled (Guarionex En El Patio)

From the series “Segunda Generacion”. A self reflection on identity. I’ve watched what challenges my parents went through just to assimilate into American culture. Spending very few summers as a youth with my family in the DR, I learned the importance of why my parents kept our culture at home. With this project, I’ve spent the past decade with my 4×5 visiting and seeing what I can document — never misrepresenting the true energy of Santo Domingo. Without losing sight, I see the Dominican Republic through time spent apart.

Nicolo Sertorio: Pastor Rodney Smith inside his recently burned church

“Sacred Paradox” beckons viewers to embrace the collective journey of rediscovering spirituality, fostering connections, and shaping a harmonious future. By elevating their voices and experiences, we hope to ignite conversations that inspire meaningful change.

This project invites viewers to embrace the sacred paradox of Oakland and envision a world where spirituality and communal engagement intertwine to forge a brighter path forward.

FAMILY / COMMUNITY

Andrés Altamirano: Textiles of Today/Textiles de Hoy – “Traje de Celebración” Salasaca

Textiles of Today, documents and archives traditional Latin American textiles, often juxtaposed against a contemporary context. Textiles of Today serves as a platform for dialogue surrounding the importance of cultural heritage, craftsmanship, and the need for safeguarding and revitalizing indigenous knowledge. In Salasaca the community grapples with the complexities of cultural preservation in the face of modernity. As the community stands on the precipice of cultural exodus and grapples with massive emigration to distant lands, preserving their costumes and traditional heritage is critical.

Guglielmo Antuono: The Last Goodbye

This is the story of two people linked together by a deep bond and their desire to say goodbye to their brother, for the last time.

Giuseppe passed away during Covid 19, they could not see him one last time, nor take part in the final farewell.

They mourned him in silence, in their homes, lulled by memories,and, perhaps some regret. Visiting their brother was an occasion to create one last memory together.

As I observed them, I asked myself if one assesses life’s experiences, does one forgive, does one still look to the future and how is this future imagined.

And here are Guglielmo and Luigi

Antonio Denti: The Longest Way Home

An incredible story of heritage and survival. Indigenous Canadians arrive to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. The Pope will eventually apologize for the role of Catholic Church in the Residential Schools’ tragedy, where hundred of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities to be taught to ”unlearn” their culture and become ”normalised” Canadians. Rarely a systematic effort to destroy an heritage has reached the levels suffered by these people. And yet, despite all, they survived and proudly traveled to the heart of the Church to receive an apology.

Ronnie Farley: Scouts, Big Foot Ride, Pine Ridge, South Dakota

Scouts, Big Foot Ride, Centennial of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, December 29, 1990.

These scouts endured -20 degree weather to lead a 300- mile horseback pilgrimage tracing Chief Big Foot’s (Sitanka) route from Bridger, South Dakota to Wounded Knee, (on the Pine Ridge Reservation) where the U.S. 7th Calvary massacred the chief and 150 others (mostly women and children) and buried them in a mass grave in 1890. This event occurs annually after Christmas as an honoring of those who were murdered, and as a healing for future generations.

Claudia Gschwend: New forms of identities

New Forms of Identities” began in January 2022, when I teamed up with Anthropologist Nathalie Pede. Together, we’re studying how the Shanenawa people in the Brazilian Amazon are changing over time.

We’ve seen how their old customs mix with new ways, shaped by today’s world. Living among them, we’ve noticed their strong link to nature, shown through little gestures and special traditions.

Our goal is to show how their heritage is growing and changing, keeping what’s important while moving forward into the future.

Juliana Holck: Tranças da Vida

The investment in continuity and fluidity refuses the sharpness of photographic registration as proof and points to a dimension of life that opens up to the world and its multiplicity. “Tranças da Vida” is a portrait of four generations of women. The braids in their hair are doing by the previous generation. The position of each braid reveals not only where their life would be in terms of longevity, but also the presence and absence of past and subsequent generations.

The portrait is not a visual chronicle, but rather an essay that speculates about the tension between finitude and flow.

Francesca Hummler: Der Stammbaum – Unsere Puppenstubbe/Our Dollhouse

“Our Dollhouse” explores my younger sister’s relationship to cultural heritage, growing up in a German-American family. This series deals with racist reactions to her adoption and her quest to connect with her biological roots. Her interaction with a dollhouse passed down through generations, furnished with family heirlooms, symbolizes her claim to our family’s memory and addresses the complexities of interracial family dynamics. The piece “The Family Tree” captures her hanging her black and white portrait on the dollhouse’s family photo wall, surrounded by images from our family’s archive.

Rachel Nixon: The Garden of Maggie Victoria: A Slow Speed

Images in this series seek to revive the story of my great-grandmother, forgotten within my northern English family after her early death in 1943.

Maggie Victoria was proud of the garden she and her husband Frank created at their Lancashire home. In a letter to Gladys, her eldest daughter, we see the first signs of her failing health. She talks of her speed working in the garden being only “a slow one to-day”. She took her last breath just a month later.

I included the lilac image as elsewhere she complains about there only being enough lilac in her garden to make two bunches for friends.

Farren van Wyk: Mixedness is my Mythology

I was born in South Africa in 1993, the official last year of the apartheid era that classified me as Coloured. My grandparents were forcefully removed and my parents chose to raise me in The Netherlands from the age of six. Being born in South Africa and growing up in the Netherlands has created a point of intersectionality in which I bring South African, Dutch, African American and Black American cultural aspects together. Being neither black nor white, a person of colour is a shade of grey in which everything is possible. In this grey area, I use photography to redefine our mixedness.

STILL-LIFE / OBJECT

Margarita V Beltran: Quien me vé, ve a mi abuela, una herida y nuestra historia

One day I came across an old photo album that had belonged to my uncle David, who had been ordained a priest of the Vincentian order. In the album there was only one photograph where my grandmother Carmen appeared, standing in the left corner of the frame and cropped in half by the photographer. I decided then, to be the photographer of my family and create a new family album, a counter-album, where women are the central representation, deciding who we are and how we build our relationship with the spiritual and religious world, as opposed to the gaze of a Latin American patriarchal culture.

Stas Ginzburg: Holding On to the Past

The oldest photo in my family depicts my great-great-grandfather Yosef Wolfson who lived in Khislavichi during 19th century Imperial Russia. His village vanished after the Revolution and WWII when Nazis massacred over 800 Jews in 1942. This was followed by decades of Soviet anti-religious propaganda that shaped my parents’ upbringing in a truly godless state. When I turned five, my mother christened my sister and me in a Russian Orthodox church, marking a resurgence of spirituality in post-Soviet Russia, which emerged in the 90s. I received a tiny silver cross to wear around my neck.

Jairo Granados-Cardenas: Carne

“Carne” is a film photograph that unfolds in the unassuming backdrop of my mother’s laundry room. The photograph’s initial impact is shaped by the context of its surroundings—the laundry room, with all its utilitarian charm, becomes the atmospheric stage for the visual narrative. However, upon closer inspection, the focal point emerges in the foreground: a twill line adorned with meticulously arranged, thinly sliced slabs of meat—the raw essence of what we affectionately call “Carne Seca.”

Hannah Latham: Final Clean Up

Bring Me A Dream is a collaborative semi-documentary series investigating inter-generational memories in a family carrying the Alzheimer’s gene. When the eldest generation moves on, where do those histories go? What does it mean for a familial line to experience a disease that steals their memory and isolates them from everything and everyone they once knew?

Through lens-based media, I look ahead to the frightening future we must face while simultaneously glancing backward at what once was for multiple generations. People, objects, and locations reference childhood memories out of reach.

Yufei Ma: Intermission

Intermission’ delves into the heritage of daily life, portraying the traditional practice of airing linens, a ritual from my childhood in Zhengzhou, China. This act symbolizes life’s pauses and reflects a legacy passed through generations. My work captures these serene moments within the urban chaos, bridging the personal with the communal. Through ‘Intermission,’ I aim to explore how simple traditions connect us to our past, encapsulating the essence of heritage in the rhythm of contemporary life.

Shawn Moreton: Ice Shack ON005980

When winter comes, the ice shacks begin to appear on the frozen ice of the lakes & rivers of Canada.

To capture these photographs, I put on my nordic skis, and head out onto the ice with my camera. Sometimes I find a solitary shack miles from any other, other times l come across a whole cluster of them, like a tiny village on a barren landscape.

Lake Nipissing, North Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Andrea Sarcos: Memories of Mamones

I didn’t grow up in Venezuela, but my family who did all have fond memories of mamones, a tiny, tangy fruit that grows in the Caribbean and Latin America. One in particular stands out in the collective memory: my aunt Irina, several months pregnant, craved mamones more than anything else. She would eat a kilo of them per day. The thing is that they were never truly satisfying, leaving her lips puckered, mouth watering, and always wanting more. After she shared her story, we created this still life together in my living room. I felt more connected to my family and heritage as a result.

Joseph P Smith: Echoes from the Silver Screen

This still life shows part of the vast collection that was amassed by the late Maltese film buff Andrew Borda. I was kindly hosted by him and his grandson to do a portrait sitting a few months before cancer took the Andrew’s life. I was granted access to the stores housing his collection and a small intimate cinema that Andrew had fashioned in a garage next to his house. His grandson Franklin has now inherited the collection and its curation.

Matilda Yueyang Peng: Special Materials

“People made of special materials” is a phrase commonly used to promote the realization of self-fulfillment and self-sacrifice in the communist context. Revolving around the effect of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on my family history, this project is a visualization of a “monologue” constantly going on between all times, people, and materials, especially the single-sided conversation that is speaking to and influencing generations of continual products of historical events. The past, present, and future are mingled here, each producing a monologue of their own.

B / W

CATEGORY WINNER

Vytautas Butkus: Vacationers near military fortifications.

Fortifications built in Karosta, Latvia in 1894 – 1900. By order of the Russian Tsar Alexander III with the aim of defending the port city from the German Empire. The fortifications were never used for military purposes. During the First World War, in 1915 in the summer, the forts were blown up to prevent them from being used by the Germans.

In the undirected photo, vacationers in 2023. summer on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Karosta.

FINALISTS

Filippo Barbero: Borderland

“Borderland’ is the intimate research aiming at establishing a dialogue between memory, reality and dream. Growing up in a small town nested in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, I found refuge in nature and its living beings, in my grandparents’ house, and in their love. I reconnect with these elements to revisit the legacy of a relationship created over time. Then begins a process of deciphering reality without a celebratory, symbolic or documentary approach. Rather, it’s an evolution towards an intimate redemption that oscillates between joy and pain, between past and present.

Claudia Bulut: Human tower

The tradition of building human towers, known as “Castells,” is a cherished cultural heritage in the Costa Dorada region of Catalonia, Spain. This awe-inspiring spectacle brings together people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds to form towering structures of strength, unity, and courage.Young and old women and men come together, each playing a vital role in the construction of these human towers. From the bravest climbers who ascend to the very top, to the sturdy base formed by the strongest individuals, every participant contributes to the collective achievement of creating a tower.

Ashley Jennings: Norwegian Woman

This tintype photograph is part of an ongoing photographic exploration of my Scandinavian heritage. I chose the historical wet plate process for this project to nod to the era of photographic innovation which coincided with the great migration of Nordic peoples to America.

The Norwegian history of folk costuming is rich and complex, and there is much to learn from the women who have always spearheaded and protected these cultural folk art traditions. This portrait of a woman in her traditional Skaut head covering with her Solje broach is a love letter to my strong female ancestors.

Adriel Michelle Barnett: Pickney & Provisions

“Pickney & Provisions” prompts introspection on life’s temporal gifts we’ve too often unknowingly overlooked. Michelle revives archival memories, intertwining them with ground provisions, utilizing breadfruit and pumpkin. Ground provisions embody a central role in Afro-Caribbean heritage as they signify the resilience and resourcefulness of our ancestors. Historically, enslaved Afro-Caribbeans cultivated ground provisions consisting of root vegetables to uphold agricultural traditions despite oppression. “Pickney & Provisions” honors our past ancestor’s contributions to familial resilience.

Martin Miklas: Manuelas everyday routine

Despite the fact that Nazaré is known in the world for its gigantic waves, with the surf competition, one of the oldest traditions of the country rests on the nearby beach: sun-drying fish.

89 years old Manuela has been drying and selling fish since she was 7. This ancestral tradition is a feminine skill that has been passed down from mothers to daughters over the years and is still alive today.

Vann Powell: Ricky, Robin, and Kennedy at Fredericksburg

From On Contentious Ground, a series looking at visitors to Civil War sites to investigate America’s past and continued connection to these sites of reckoning. The series visually articulates the relationship historical events of the American Civil War have had on who we are as Americans today. By picturing visitors in these spaces and how they interact and reflect on the memories of slavery’s legacy and the cost of freedom for everyone in our nation, I aim to capture the reverberations of the Civil War rippling into our time, as if to picture the long shadow the Civil War has cast onto today.

Alfield Reeves: Grandma

While visiting home (Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa) in April of 2023 for my father surprise 60th birthday party I got to spend a lot of time with my family, including my grandmother. So while the family was in the kitchen hanging out and enjoying each others company I captured this candid of her just observing.

Oliver Stegmann: The exuberant Carnival of Basel

The Carnival of Basel is a vibrant cultural festival in Switzerland, known as Basler Fasnacht. It features parades, music, costumes, and traditional masked characters. It occurs annually, starting on the Monday after Ash Wednesday. It lasts for exactly 72 hours, ending on Thursday morning. The processions of the Cortege (french for parade) are not only a visual and auditory spectacle but also a showcase of creativity. Several groups of people bring their chosen themes to life through costumes and the iconic masks.

Arun Tharakan: Net Crafting Specialist from the Arab Region.

I captured this image from Dubai heritage festival ,A skilled artisan specializing in the intricate craft of creating nets, hailing from the Arab region. Known for their expertise in weaving and crafting various types of nets, this specialist combines traditional techniques with regional influences to produce finely detailed and functional meshwork.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SUBMITTED

GRAND PRIZE / ONE WINNER:
Winner will be the photograph with the highest score overall in any category. 

◦ Featured interview on the Lucie Foundation website
◦ Part of Lucie Foundation Online Exhibition for competition
◦ Cash prize $1,000
◦ 16×20″ print of the Winning Image from Paper and Ink Studio (printed and shipped worldwide)
◦ Pick of one (1) Lucie Honoree Poster (unsigned edition)

CATEGORY WINNERS / 3 WINNERS:
Winners will be the highest score in the remaining categories. Categories remaining will depend on Grand Prize winner. 

◦ Part of Lucie Foundation Online Exhibition for competition
◦ Cash prize $250
◦ 16×20″ print of the Winning Image from Paper and Ink Studio (printed and shipped worldwide)
◦ Pick of one (1) Lucie Honoree poster (unsigned edition)

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