HARDIJANTO BUDIMAN | 1st PLACE

WHEN THE GAME IS OVER | 1x.com/hardibudi

His name is Hardijanto Budiman, also known as Hardibudi. He was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. Currently, he lives in BSD City, approximately 40 kilometers west of Jakarta. He adores his neighborhood for its quietness and peaceful atmosphere, which he finds perfect for inspiring his creativity and generating ideas.

Hardijanto is a self-taught photographer who developed an interest in photography in the early 2000s. Art has always been an overflowing part of his life. Since he was a boy, he has had a deep passion for drawing and painting, finding in art the freedom to create anything he desires, whether it be fantasy or reality. He is particularly fond of Surrealism, which significantly influences many of his works. His ideas and inspirations flow effortlessly, much like water in a river. For Hardijanto, photography is the ideal medium to express his artistic passion. His works represent the journey of his life, encompassing the expression of imagination, emotion, and his life experiences. In addition to photography, he also has a love for poetry. This is evident on his Instagram, where each photo he posts is accompanied by a poem, using this medium to convey his messages. Hardijanto draws inspiration from many amazing artists, most of whom are not photographers. These include Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Andy Warhol, and Yayoi Kusama. However, he also admires photographers like Fan Ho, Sebastiao Salgado, Noelle Oszvald, and Evelyn Bencicova.

AMIRHOSSEIN LOLOEI | 2nd PLACE

ETERNITY | amirhslophotography.com

He is a professional art photographer from Tehran with specializations in portrait, fashion, and editorial photography. Since the beginning of his career, he has been active in international exhibitions and has won prestigious awards. His collaborations extend to multiple magazines worldwide.

He draws inspiration from classic paintings and is continually fascinated by the composition, coloring, and uniqueness of the images. In his opinion, light and color are the essential elements and tools required to create an impactful photograph.

GAVIN LIBOTTE | 3rd PLACE

THE SEEKER | beeblebroxcreativestudio.com

Gavin Rene Libotte is an Australian photographer originally from Kent in Sussex, England. He started his photography journey using film as a teenager, even setting up a darkroom in his bathroom. After a long hiatus, in which he studied Graphic Design, Fine Art and Jazz/Classical Guitar in Perth, Gavin returned to photography and videography in 2019. He began by using iPhones then took to the streets with Fuji and Ricoh cameras, discovering a love of fine art street photography. Gavin is a full-time Musician, Educator and Yogi, and has recently started working as a Commercial Photographer. He finds the practice of photography in alignment with his meditation routine, helping him to live in the present moment. Based in Sydney, Australia, Gavin is currently working on several street photography projects and exhibiting his work in international group exhibitions.

BENOIT DUPUY | HONORABLE MENTION

THE LIFT | flickr.com/photos/189574895@N04/

He has been passionate about photography for over thirty years. Over these years, his quest for aesthetics has evolved into a continuous search for originality. This journey, combined with his desire for staging, necessitates a constant observation of the various leagues and life scenes that surround him.

He acknowledges that the results do not always meet expectations, but he believes that failure is a part of progress. His passion drives him forward, fueling his ongoing commitment to his art.

ALEXANDRU CRISAN | HONORABLE MENTION

INVISIBLE THOUGHTS| alexandru-crisan.com

Alexandru Crișan (b. Bucharest, Romania 1978) is a visual artist interested in the existential complementarity of objective and nonobjective forms of expression. To resolve the former, he is an architect – “but one doesn’t shoot the breeze when it comes to architecture, one comes with bricks and mortar where the breeze will shoot”… As far as the latter is to be unpacked, his “counter-professional” career in photography began in 2008; his paintings stand, for almost three decades, as the most intimate, borderline atavistic, acts of divulgence. Assuming that taxonomy is of any consequence, he is partial to fine-art photography and abstract expressionism.

The eclectic nature of his works is, therefore, a given. His photography is a direct result of compulsive visual disquisitions on impromptu portraiture, architectural equivocations, parametric manipulations, “hybrid storytelling” and evocative conservationism. Most of his long-term, open-ended photographic series – such as “MyRomania”, “Minimal White / Minimal Black”, or “Lost Highway / My Car is Your Avatar” – are meditations on loci and human perceptions. The research on and within photography gradually afforded him a surreal vision of immateriality, which he debonairly likes to describe as “tormenting several stages of a hyperrealist mise en abyme”. Since 2015, he developed quite a few “meta-projects”: “Erotoarchitecture”, “Metropoesis”, “Asylum (in nuce)”, “Impossible Architectures”, “Hortus Conclusus”, “Alex Transcends the Balkans for a Bottle of Perfume”, “Mechaniarchy” and “Shoah”, under the compelling awareness and besetting exploration of otherness and of self.