Edgar Martin’s Libyan portraits win the Sony World Photography Award

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London. The evocative and intensely narrative Libyan portraits “in memoriam” by Portuguese photographer Edgar Martin win the Sony World Photography Awards 2023. The prize goes to the “Our War” project that Martins dedicated to the photojournalist Anton Hammerl, kidnapped and executed on 5 April 2011 by government militias during the Libyan civil war. In the impossibility of finding Hammerl’s mortal remains and conducting an in-depth investigation into his friend’s end, the Portuguese photographer decided to shift his investigation to a reflection with “more metaphysical” contours, and of sure universal significance, such as the theme of absence and mourning, as well as that of memory. Thus the faces portrayed, and they are those of the guerrillas for or against Gaddafi, and of ordinary people met by chance, stopped in the sparse shade of the palm trees, among the tangle of rushes, armed in camouflage overalls or in highly allusive poses, recompose through a sort of meta-portrait-collage the “impossible face” of the lost friend and of the war that he already wanted to tell.

The power of memory

Martin’s is a narration with a strong tension, emerging and unsettling, which through a skilful game of mise en abyme questions us, and questions himself at the same time, about the perennial mystery of death, to try to fill the immeasurable void. A contemporary odyssey, for an unattainable Ithaca, that of Martin, who is comforted, again and again in the face of the otherwise annihilating force of death, by the human power of memory. “How to tell a story without direct witnesses, traces, proofs or protagonists?” was the question to which Martin provided a possible answer through the faces of the people he met and poetically portrayed.

Libya

Having entered Libya secretly thanks to an oil smuggler, the author of the photos immediately had to face the enormous difficulty of working in such precarious conditions. In “Our War” he therefore worked on the ellipse through an evocative process, with densely allusive outlines. The Libyan contacts of the deceased friend and those who had participated in the conflict (freedom fighters or their descendants, former militia soldiers, residents, faithful or Gaddafi impersonators, thus became the protagonists of this project, all chosen because they had the same appearance, the same ideas and beliefs as Hammerl, or because they reminded Martins of the different moments of their friendship.The project, which thus documented the Libyan conflict at the same time, emphasizes the very idea of ​​fragmentation and inherent contradiction in all conflicts.

Award commentary

“It is an immense honor to receive this recognition,” was his comment. And again: “although I usually have a rather detached approach to awards and I am aware of the subjective nature of personal choices, knowing that this year the Professional competition received over 180,000 entries puts everything back into perspective. In this particular case, it was very emotional to be able to pay tribute to a friend on an international stage and bring to the public’s attention the family’s struggle to find his remains. No other award has the same reach as the Sony World Photography Awards.”

Martins was selected among the first 10 categories of the Professional competition, announced together with the second and third places in each category and the overall winners of the Open, Youth and Student competitions.