The Portuguese Edgar Martins was acclaimed Photographer of the Year at the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards thanks to a series of portraits in honor of his photojournalist friend Anton Hammerl, killed during the Libyan civil war in 2011.
Martins, winner in the Portrait category, was selected by a jury among the winners of the 10 different categories in competition, having stood out for the series "A Nossa Guerra", made after a first visit to Libya in 2019.
Frustrated with the lack of results in the investigation into the death of Hammerl, kidnapped and executed by a government militia, Martins sought out acquaintances and people involved in the civil war resulting from the fall of Mohammar Gaddafi's regime during the Arab Spring.
“I realized, from the moment I arrived in the country, that it would be very difficult to conduct or create or develop any kind of coherent research in such a fragmented and volatile place. , but also a project that took into account other more ontological issues", said Martins to the Lusa agency.
The Portuguese photographer based in the United Kingdom was speaking during the preview of the exhibition of the photographs in London, before knowing the attribution of the main award of this edition of the Sony Awards. Edgar Martins stressed that, in addition to paying homage to his friend, this project "talks about the difficulty of documenting, the difficulty of witnessing, imagining and representing war and times of war".
"By recreating Anton's journey a bit, the space he took, going to the places he visited and the place where he died, meeting the people he met and photographed, and others involved in the project , namely rebels, militias, all kinds of Libyan fighters, militants, dissidents, but also local people who were enacting their own stories, by finding relevant intersections between our journeys and also realizing the motivations behind his, I think I was to his reunion, albeit briefly," he said.
The president of the jury for the professional competition, Mike Trow, described Martins' work as "very strong, beautifully done", praising the photographer's courage to travel to Libya to do this work, which highlights the risks that the photographers in war scenes.
"Edgar is an unusual photographer. He is very intense, he is very serious. And what we liked about the story of the portrait was that it was portrayed as a memory, a memory of a friend, a fellow photographer. He created a series of scenarios for represent the story of your friend," he told Lusa.
The Photographer of the Year distinction includes a monetary prize of US$25,000 (23,000 euros), photographic equipment, and a solo exhibition in 2024, as part of the annual exhibition of winners of the Sony World Photography Awards.
Edgar Martins told Lusa that this project, which in addition to photographs includes a series of other materials resulting from his research, will be the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon. Around 180,000 photographers entered the professional competition for this year's Sony Awards in the categories of Portrait, Architecture and Design, Creativity, Documentary, Environment, Landscape, Portfolio, Sport, Still Life and Wildlife & Nature.
For example, the British Hugh Kinsella Cunningham, winner in the Documentary category, presented a work on the efforts of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maintain peace, the American Corey Arnold (Wildlife & Nature) photographed bears, coyotes and raccoons in cities across the United States, and South African Lee-Ann Olwage (Creatividade) explored the everyday school life of girls in Kenya.
The photographs that took part in this year's competition will be on display from Friday until May 1st at Somerset House, London.