By Heidi Trautmann
It must have been quite a
job to select from 920 photographs by 76 photographers, firstly those for the
winning awards, and secondly those which were found worthy to be exhibited in
this year’s competition and subsequent exhibition. In the end there are 36
artists with 68 selected works exhibited in the Atatürk Cultural Centre. The competition is being organised by the
Cultural Directorate, now for 24 years!
Among the seven winners are
well known and often decorated photographers but also some new ones:
In the category black and
white: Mehmet Gökyiğit and Ediz Tuncel;
In the colour category:
Buket Özatay and Ahmet Dağbaşı;
In the nature category:
Hasan Bağlar and Mustafa Evirgen;
Special prizes were given to: the Rauf Raif Denktas Award to Arif Işgüzar;
The award by the Cultural
Directorate was given to Mehmet Gökyiğit for his photo honouring the oldest
Cypriot photographer Mehmet Şik, and
again Mustafa Evirgen for being the most active photographer in the competition
over the years.
The category NATURE was well
represented with magnificent macro photos showing its beauty and the love of
the artists for it. It takes patience to work in this category and the passion
to observe. The art of Black and White photography is determined by the object,
a landscape, by an old face, the play with the shadow as reflection or contrast
and, one of my favourites, the architecture photography. The category of COLOUR
included themes of free choice: there are beautiful images of nature or
encounters with situations, an impression of a single moment.
Lately, we have had many
photo exhibitions with unbelievably good results – I have reported on my
website – and the passion is taking hold of more and more people. There are
quite a few photo associations in the TRNC, FODER, for example, the latest
being one in Kyrenia GIFDER; there are other photo competitions, for example
the one running is the 7th Özatay Competition which has attracted a
lot of attention and can be joined until January 07, 2015, see my website.
We have many famous
photographers in North Cyprus , many of them I have interviewed and their
stories are published in my book ‘Art and Creativity in North Cyprus, Volume
I’, stories written by the hard life and political situations reigning over the
last century.
The exhibition is still on
until January 02 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre; visiting hours are official
governmental office hours.