Connecting the Art of Photography | The paper

He certainly does not select simple shots. It does not aim to attract photographers who live in their anonymity, but it interests those who live, camera in hand, in the digital and post-digital age which has complicated creativity and copyright. It is an initiative that appears to the sector as beautiful as a new photo gallery. Full of enthusiasm and emotion: as it should happen in front of an art photograph. The international competition, launched at the Mudec in Milan, with the compact ranks team of the Deloitte Foundation, is a truly important cultural fact. Sixty thousand euros are put on the plate for the two great photography artists who will win the first edition of the Deloitte Photo Grant (40 and 20 for the two sessions). One prize and one online open calls which was taken on Tuesday 31 January in via Tortona, in Milan, in a cultural center that oozes positive energy everywhere and is no longer just for fashion or finance.

It is also image, it is also creativity, it is value and an opportunity to bring out, give fame to – international – photographers who deserve the doc of artists. At the highest levels of photography quality. “It is and will be the first international competition that rewards the authorship of photography – explains the artistic director Denis Curti – certainly not the first in the world, but the most important in Italy. We present an award that must give enthusiasm and build notoriety to photographers capable of producing connected culture and creativity, photographers who deserve to be known for their talent”.

This first edition will therefore focus on the theme of connections, as Curtis explains: “It is a competition with a double meaning, it intercepts masters of photojournalism, masters of photography as art, it represents an important opportunity to make yourself known”. Perfect moment. At a time when the value of the image is elevated to art and becomes a material asset, like one of the photos that made history – Le Violon d’ingres – by the American artist Man Ray capable of astonishing with the sales record at auction, at Christie’s, sold for $12.4 million.

Connections of the Deloitte Photo Grant proposes two sessions and a team effort that intercepts a first level of signallers – an initial jury for the first selection – and a second level of judges, the actual jury. The great photographers, even the lesser-known ones, without limits of age and origin, and the young photographers, the under 35s, called to propose a work that is not only made up of shots and selection of images, but a project, a photographic storytelling that applies and sticks to the chosen theme: connections.

“We reward quality photography and the session reserved for young people is not only open to professionals – says Denis Curti – precisely to give a voice to new talents: here we will not select the most beautiful photos but the most beautiful project. Investigating goes in the direction of Connections: at a human, professional, economic and environmental level”. Whoever wins, among the great talents and young talents, in addition to the prize, will redeem the possibility of exhibiting at the Mudec, also the leader of an editorial work – produced by Sole24ore Cultura – a big book capable of guaranteeing fame and cultural eternity to these photographs of author.

For the new Deloitte Photo Grant prize we are looking for “Shots and not snapshots” as a great Milanese photographer said, Vito Liverani, founder of the Olympia and Omega Fotocronache agencies, the progenitor of that storytelling copyright that today Deloitte wants to track down, enhance, reward. From here to the eternity of the culture and value of photography. Liverani, before becoming a great photographer and creating two large agencies, was a boxer… There will be a reason.