Congratulations to Danila Tkachenko for his 1st Place Award for CENTER’s Director’s Choice Award, for his project, Restricted Areas.The juror for the Director’s Award was Enrico Stefanelli, President and Director of the Photolux Festival in Italy. His statement for the selections follows:

It is an honor for me to have been a part of The Choice Awards. I reviewed very interesting projects and treatments with different photographic languages, from conceptual to portraits, from reportage and photojournalism to the landscape. I congratulate all the photographers because I noticed the high quality of the work and it was not easy to choose the best. Many photographers are on the right path and it is necessary for them to continue. One suggestion is to be very careful with the editing and the smallest details. Sometimes just a single photograph can make a project better or worse. I would also invite photographers to seek their own language and their own mode of expression that differs, if possible, from what we have seen. They have to see the world with “new eyes” and show us this new vision.

The planning, the rigor of the technique and a good edit will ensure that your work is recognized.

Thanks for this opportunity that also for us jurors a time of growth.

Restricted Areas

The project “Restricted Areas” is about the human impulse towards utopia, about our striving for perfection through technological progress.

For “Restricted Areas,” I traveled in search of places which used to hold great importance for the idea of technological progress. These places are now deserted. They have lost their significance, along with their utopian ideology which is now obsolete. Many of these places were once secret cities, that did not even appear on any maps or public records.
Any progress comes to its end earlier or later, what’s interesting for me is to witness what remains after.