Bruce Gilden special prize, Book Award and all the URBAN 2021 awards

Just a few more days left before the 12th URBAN Photo Awards open for entries- see you on Monday 1st March 2021! As you may already know, this year’s contest features the great New York street photographer Bruce Gilden as President of the jury. The contest offers a prize money worth over €23,000 in Amazon vouchers, exhibitions, publications and various special prizes. Here are the details.

Bruce Gilden special prize

In over 50 years, Bruce Gilden has made his style of street photography instantly recognisable: emotionally engaging, close-up photographs of real people. His trademark ranges from flash-lit black and white “street scenes” to a series of equally identifiable “faces”. Gilden’s work distils the variety, character and movement of the street. This year we have introduced the Bruce Gilden Special Prize in his honour: a special section dedicated to strictly “street” Projects and Portfolios destined to be part of a prestigious and unique photographic volume, edited by Bruce Gilden himself. The book will contain 7-8 portfolios selected by him, together with one of his unpublished projects, and will be premiered at Trieste Photo Days 2021. The selected projects will also be exhibited in a group exhibition during the festival. We will unveil the prestigious location as soon as possible!

URBAN Book Award

In addition to the “classic” sections for Single Photos and Projects/Portfolios, there will also be the URBAN Book Award section dedicated to extended authorial projects destined to become photographic books produced and promoted within the Trieste Photo Days festival. Last year, the prize was awarded to the project Journey to the Lowlands by the Modenese photographer Valeria Sacchetti.
URBAN Book Award has taken the place of the TPD Book Award, the “call for dummies” launched in the past few years as part of the Trieste Photo Days, thanks to which talents from all over the world have been discovered, rewarded and supported: in 2017 the Japanese Tadashi Onishi with Lost in Shinjuku, in 2018 the Greek Zisis Kardianos with the project InLimbo and the Japanese Hiro Tanaka with Around 42nd and 7th, in 2019 the Russian photographer Ilya Shtutsa with the project Not Only Grey.

New Buildings Special Prize – Matrix4Design

The New Buildings special prize is also back, as a result of a renewed partnership with the digital magazine Matrix4Design. New Buildings was launched for the first time in 2020 and is dedicated to contemporary architectural photography, particularly to the architectural icons that have changed cities’ skylines in the last ten years. To participate, all you need to do is assign the tag New Buildings (Matrix4Design prize) to the Single Photos in the SPACES category. The finalists can win an exhibition in Milan, an Amazon voucher worth € 500 for the winner and much more.

Trieste Science+Fiction Festival Special Prize

A new photographic award in the 2021 edition of URBAN Photo Awards, conceived in close collaboration with Trieste Science+Fiction Festival, the main Italian festival dedicated to science fiction. The award will be dedicated to artistic photographs freely inspired by science fiction in everyday life. To participate, all you need to do is assign the tag Science+Fiction (Trieste Science+Fiction Festival Prize) to the Single Photos competing in the CREATIVE category.

Prize exhibitions at the Sartorio Museum (Trieste) and the Porec Museum (Croatia)

We are pleased to confirm two important prizes offered by our institutional partners.

For the third year in a row, the Civic Museums of History and Art of the Municipality of Trieste are offering a prize-exhibition at the Civic Museum Sartorio for four projects selected by Laura Carlini Fanfogna (Director of the Museums and Libraries Service of the Municipality of Trieste) and Claudia Colecchia (Head of the Photo Library and Library of the Civic Museums of History and Art of the Municipality of Trieste). The exhibition will take place at the end of October as part of the Trieste Photo Days festival.

This year the Museum of the Poreč Territory (Poreč, Croatia), URBAN’s historical partner, will offer the usual prize-exhibition for 1 project selected by the Museum Director Elena Uljančić and the curators. The prize-exhibition is scheduled for the end of July.

And of course, there will be the main prizes: Overall Winner of the Single Photo section (chosen by Bruce Gilden), First portfolio, Best Author, honourable mentions and remarkable rewards.