TEHRAN – Photographers Chiharo Hara from Japan and Saeid Rezvanian from Iran have shared the Abbas Kiarostami Gold Camera at the 5 International Photo Award.

The prize was launched for the first time this year to honor the top work in the New Look category in the fourth edition of the award ceremony held at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday, which was the birthday of Kiarostami, the world-renowned Iranian filmmaker and photographer.

The prize is a statue of Kiarostami’s hands holding a gold camera.

The award ceremony started with reciting poems from “Wind and Leaf”, a book carrying Kiarostami’s selections from and adaptations of four masters of Persian poetry – Nima, Hafez, Sadi and Molana Jalal ad-Din Balkhi.

The reciting done by Nazanin Farahani and Armin Deylam in Persian and Italian was accompanied with cellist Anahita Izadparsa.

The performance was followed by a short speech by 5 International Photo Award president Mehdi Shadizadeh who expressed his thanks to all the people supporting the event.

The photographers Serkan Çolak from Turkey and Fatemeh Rohani from Iran shared the 5 International Photo Award this year.

Sajjad Dadpur won the award in the video art category and several prizes were also awarded on the side sections by the sponsors of the event, including the Tehran Institute of Technology.

Japanese photographer Takehiko Nakafuji, the jury president, could not attend the award ceremony, and jury member Behdad Najafi read the jury’s statement.

The statement praised over 2700 submissions from Italy, Thailand, France, Afghanistan, Turkey, Japan and dozens of other countries.    

“We are not the ones who were previously looking and this is a great lesson we learned from the photos,” the statement reads.

The jury also comprised Frank Baquet from Germany, Ayako Takaishi from France, Tahir Un from Turkey, and Mara Zamuner from Italy. Lili Golestan, Alireza Shadizadeh, Alireza Kanji, Majid Talebi and Adel Hervian were the Iranian members of the jury.

Kiarostami’s frequent visits to a single almost 500-year-old tree of Juniper species near the village Aro in the Damavand region inspired the photo award. The tree was the subject of numerous photographs taken by Kiarostami at different times in various seasons.

In addition, the award’s title refers to “Five Dedicated to Ozu”, Kiarostami’s 2003 documentary which is a tribute to Japanese filmmaker Yasujir Ozu whose work deeply influenced Kiarostami’s films.

Photo: Members of the jury award winners during the 5 International Photo Award at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art on June 22, 2023. (Fatemeh Sobati)

MMS/YAW