Selecting the most deserving photographs each year is no ordinary task – our esteemed jury members live and breathe photography, but even for them, it takes time and debate to choose the top works. This year, the best advertising photographs from 2020 BIFA winners reflect a smart stance on each subject, creative angles and a burst of colour.
An image exploring the concept of creativity: making mistakes is just a part of the process and should not be frowned upon.
What happens when increasingly we use GMO’s to make our food? This project is a playful, yet serious representation of how genetically modified foods could work – in an extreme scenario, or just the near-future.
A video installation that helps us switch off, even for a couple of minutes. The world we live in is characterized by rushing everywhere, our attention divided into a million little pieces and directions. Meditation and relaxation is crucial to find inner peace. View the video here.
A photo series for the Toyota Group, with all its models in one picture, grouped together in unity.
A Chinese herb mixture that helps with the treatment of aquaculture products. The consumer and seller often do not realize what additives they are consuming or selling – this is said to be a safer way.
Food packaging and the discovery of colours: a combination of these tins with recipes and food to kill time during the isolation in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Time to take a look at what lies inside of us: in ancient Japanese culture, the masks were made to ward off evil. However, what can we do if it lies deep within us?
In a drying factory, Bangladeshi women are working tirelessly to sort out only the best red chilies for selling. More than 1000 workers work a minimum of 10 hours each single day for less than 2 USD.
A beautiful story under water: the dancer move with grace, their dresses capturing the light and shadows.
A playful session where a number of different colored bottles were combined with straws and effects.
We often define Fine Art as “art for art’s sake,” which provides the viewer with a sense of visual aesthetic, an escape from the everyday life. To salute the best fine art photographers of BIFA 2020, we have compiled the ten most creative and alluring photographs.
A striking experimental image that shows us the deepest animal-like attributes a human can have. The photographer has been capturing beauty in the ordinary for the past 36 years, uncovering meaning under the superficial.
Ever wondered what birds soaring high see when they look down at us, humans? These photos were captured above public places with a drone, the multiple images combines to have an almost surreal effect upon taking a closer look.
The perfect symbol of beauty born in murky places: the pink lotus is given life in the muddiest places on Earth, and is one of the most beautiful flowers. Looking at this photo, one would think that such pure, unadulterated grace can only emerge from a less than ideal environment.
Stark vision and a photo that even when sitting, causes vertigo in the viewer. In Hong Kong, we can find the tallest skyscrapers in the world, the buildings that house thousands of people tower above the people walking minding their daily business.
An homage to those who are always looking at the open road, to those who are always looking for a new adventure and those as well, who do not know what they will be facing at the end of the bend: this minimalistic image evokes feelings that all of us face at one point in our lives.
A mixture of surrealism and noble Dutch art, the photographer’s aim was to depict the young eyes of children who are our future: their decisions will have an impact for generations to come, just like ours had as well.
Our inner monologue: everyone has it. In some cases, the personalities within us live in harmony with each other, but in some instances, there is a war going on. The artist aimed to show this never-ending battle within ourselves through the lens of her camera.
Although last year, most of us spent time locked away safely, there was still the opportunity to “travel,” through the Internet. The 10 best architecture photography at the Budapest International Foto Awards proves just this: through the lens of a photographer, we can see almost every corner of the globe.
This photography series explores hallways and doors, demonstrating that even though they belong to no particular room or space and we don’t pay too much attention to them when passing through, they are nevertheless worth examining closer.
A tour around the rural and urban locations in Italy. The photographer’s mission was to capture the beauty of forgotten and abandoned buildings, bringing them back to life through the lens.
This time, the artist takes us to their home town, Rybnik, in Poland. An aerial photo of municipal swimming pool soon to become completely empty because of the COVID-19 pandemic – the pool was closed the next few days.
The photo series shows us the fascinating curves of the Canadian Museum of History designed by architect Douglas Cardinal, located in Gatineau, Canada. The main focus here were the deliberately arrange curves of the building, resulting in a lively, wave-like structure.
the photographer divided the pictures into different colors, matching them up with geometric shapes. The aim: to give people a sense of visual pleasure.
An homage to the chairs left in random places, the series explores different rooms and locations where solitary chairs were left for unknown reasons. The artist began to notice these chairs around the most unexpected locations, like shipyards and mills, as well as prisons and decided to document them.
Once we go under the streets of Munich, we see the colorful metro, an alternate dimension with all the shapes and forms masterfully arranged to bring some light into the world of the underground.
The boneyard of old, almost ancient locomotives, captured as a dream-like vision. The rusty steam trains take us back into history, a time forgotten.
The Wuppertal Opera House in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany has an interior design reminiscent of the 50’s, including the depicted staicase.
A series dedicated to Mother Nature reclaiming abandoned places is also an alegory to show how powerful nature is. The second humans leave a place, plants start growing, reclaiming their old territory.
Nature’s sheer force and beauty has always captured the attention of its mesmerized viewers. The 2020 Budapest International Foto Awards saw some of the strongest entries in nature, reflecting not only nature as it is, but as viewed by the talented photographers. Here is our selection of some of the finest photographs taken.
The series started in the summer of 2019. It all began with a single rose. The rose that the photographer’s daughter received for her 18th birthday. This rose prompted her to think about youth, beauty, transience… In addition to rose petals, she began experimenting with other flowers, leaves, twigs, grasses, seeds – everything she would find in her garden.
Today, the worldwide network of roads connects almost every place and every city. The photographer personally has been fascinated for years by the inconspicuous, often unpaved or only rarely used roads and tracks in some of the most remote places in the world. Roads through lava fields, dried up salt lakes or even wetlands.
This photo was taken in the Similan Islands of Thailand. At this time the visibility of the water was not so good, and this whale shark suddenly appeared in front of the photographer. He describes it looking like a UFO.
This truly stunning crater row is located in Iceland. The intense red on the rims is caused by the scoria being colored by the oxidation of the iron minerals in the lava. This is turn contrasts sharply with the surrounding basalt. An other-wordly scene, with a tiny white vehicle driving on the lower road.
Heartbreaking scene of a polar bear family, they are standing on the last pieces of ice in eastern Svalbard. Without ice, the mother is unable to hunt and feed her cubs.
A photo series portraying the impact of humankind’s destructive industrial practices on the natural environment. The Rio Tinto river flows to the gulf of Cadiz carrying high acidity levels and heavy metals, in effect making this an environment disaster, a toxic reminder of human’s ability to irreversibly destroy the landscape in the name of corporate profits, a legacy of greed for future generations.
A photo taken at just the right moment, in the winter, just one hour before sunset.
Like a scene from another planet, this dead marshland is located in the middle of the desert near Sousslevei. It is characterized by orange sand dunes that surrounds a white dried floor and darkened thorn trees thought to be as old as 900 years. This scene was captured at sunset, when the shadows started growing into the sunny areas.
An underwater photograph series taken in the waters of Egypt and Indonesia.
The photo was taken over a post-industrial area in central Poland. As a result of human activity and natural biological processes, amazing forms are created that we can only see from an aerial perspective. A peculiar different world emerges – the cosmos.
Taken at a diving point in the Philippines, Second Place winner in the Nature category at the Budapest International Foto Awards captured a whale shark floating peacefully under the boats above it. Its size can reach up to 10 meters and it is one of the most tranquil fish on Earth.
Taken while on holiday in Brittany visiting the family, the photographer decided to get to the beach to practice film. He was so busy composing images of seagulls on shore that he didn’t pay too much attention to the sky. All of a sudden he realised a giant wave-shaped cloud was approaching.
A dream-like beauty, this Arctic fox appeared in Svalbard on a perfectly snowy day, – 40 degrees Celsius.
Almost like magic: the turquoise lake in the crater of the Kawah Ijen volcano looks serene and inviting. It also happens to be the world’s largest acidic lake. The main highlight on this occasion was watching the Milkyway rise on the crater summit.
