Photo Contest „Intercultural Encounters“ Intercultural Dialogue has been a priority of Austrian Foreign Cultural Policy for the past years. In order to further strengthen this concept a Task Force “Dialogue of Cultures” has been established in the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs with the objective to build trust and peace, to overcome prejudices and stereotypes as well as to strengthen democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The Task Force’s projects are characterised by continuous cooperation with civil society, composed of organisations and individuals who dedicate their efforts to the promotion and advancement of dialogue as an indispensable concept. The photo contest „Intercultural Encounters“ describes the Task Force’s most recent initiative and aims to capture impressions, encounters, and experiences in the field of dialogue in form of pictures. The project further serves as an attempt to illustrate the many facets of dialogue as well as the diversity in opinion, interpretation, and understanding of the photographers in respect to the presented subject. A central aspect is “travelling”, which presents an imperative tool to approach and explore different cultures. For this purpose a call was sent out to the interested public through the network of Austrian Cultural Fora and Embassies worldwide. The 35 most impressive and meaningful photos out of the 189 received photos were preselected by the Task Force and a jury composed of Gerald Bast, Verena Kaspar-Eisert, Gerhard Mosshammer, Eva Schlegel and Kamen Stoyanov identified the winners of the first “Intercultural Photo Award”: Joel Lukhovi, Dusana Baltic, Teresa Belkow, Mareike Boysen und Rafiz Fera. The photos in this booklet are part of an exhibition which will be shown in various places worldwide with the support of Austrian Cultural Fora and Embassies aiming to spread the concept of intercultural dialogue. Ambassador Martin Eichtinger Director-General for Cultural Policy Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs Vienna, June 2014
Pepo la Tumaini Women from Borana, Meru, Turkana and Samburu communities unite and take part in their biannual intercommunity religious celebration at Pepo la Tumaini, to foster peaceful co-existence in Isiolo. This is a part of Kenya that is constantly affected by communal rivalry due to wars from other clans, inadequate natural resources like water and pasture for cattle. This celebration is a successful medium for cultural exchange amongst the varying communities and for the development of minority communities. Photographer: Joel M. Lukhovi (Kenya) Place: Isiolo, Kenya
Date: January 2014
Music knows no borders This picture was taken in Madrid during the international street art project called “StreetlifeMAD�. More than 20 artists were involved and more than 300 street shows were performed in the centre of Madrid. Photographer: Dusana Baltic (Austria) Place: Madrid, Spain
Date: August 2011
Stairways to paradise This photo was taken during field research in Huaycan, an independently governed urban community in Lima, Peru. Two students reflect over the environmental and social problems of this community, which has sprawled to risky territories due to migration, like the hills in the background. This created the necessity for stairs, giving the valleys their characteristic look with stairs lying like ribbons over the hills and the neighbours ironically calling them “the stairways to paradise�. Photographer: Teresa Belkow (Peru) Place: Lima, Peru
Date: May 2013
Stones in the ear Naomi, my eight-year-old neighbor in Havana’s outer district 10 de Octubre, used to spend more time with adults than children of her age and liked to enlighten me on the peculiarities of the Spanish and the state of the world. One day she discovered my MP3 player and thenceforward she didn’t let go of it. She particularly enjoyed the music of the German speaking soft hip-hopper Clueso for the following reason: “Your language sounds to me like a pile of stones, but nicely wrapped.” Photographer: Mareike Boysen (Austria) Place: Havana, Cuba
Date: May 2013
Hole in the city wall Skopje is a place that unites different cultures and religions, from the past and the present, that communicate through time and space. This is a photography that shows a cityscape through the loophole in the medieval Byzantine city. It shows a 16th century clock tower with the clock manufactured in Hungary and a mosque from the Ottoman Empire period that interlace with the contemporary architecture. It is a small patch of the cityscape that tells the story of the cultural encounter in my city today, narrated through the symbols from the past. Photographer: Rafiz Fera (Macedonia) Place: Skopje, Macedonia
Date: February 2014
Two destinies On this photo you can see two little girls on the same street with their mothers. They feel safe and they are in the same position but diversity of life is much brighter for the girl in the left as it appears but I hope that one day they will see each other as equals. Photographer: Admir Derviťević (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Place: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Date: October 2013
Birds chatter “Birds chatter� is the name that I chose for this picture, which presents these lovely moments between these two lovely kids. Photographer: Sara Alami (Morocco) Place: Morocco
Date: February 2014
Cooking The cultures of the world differ in various aspects and styles of cooking. Parents also teach their children the way they should cook according to their traditions and way of life. In Kenya children are taught on how to cook with their parents, they then copy this and start participating it as they play, this includes lighting the “JIKO� (cooking equipment) getting some food and then starting to cook. This simple practice teaches most Kenyan children on how to cook. Photographer: Stephen Ouma (Kenya) Place: Nairobi, Kenya
Date: October 2013
Together for Diversity This photo was taken during a voluntary experience in Kenya last summer. During this intercultural encounter I learned a lot from the local people who have a different way of life, more basic than ours. I learned to appreciate their life and bit by bit I settled in myself well with them. I would recommend this experience to others as it managed to enrich my intercultural aspect of life. Photographer: Christian Mamo (Malta) Place: Ilkilorit, Kenya
Date: August 2013
Laughing without borders Intercultural and intergenerational encounter in Bahia: Laughing is contagious and unites people beyond continents and generations. During a family visit in Boa Vista do Tupim, Bahia, Brazil. Photographer: Daniel Kemper (Austria) Place: Bahia, Brazil
Date: January 2014
Latent Hunger, the cold, the longing for education are latent. The gazes and dreams of the girls and boys, who live and grow up there, are latent. Dreams of castles, schools and food, while they recover from work. Mankind, who lets that happen, is latent. Photographer: Paola Mariana Soriano Ortiz (Bolivia) Place: Mauban, Philippines
Date: August 2013
When eyes speak
Dialogue is not only a conversation. It can take place in different ways: for example through eyes, like the ones of this girl in Caviana. Dialogue makes us human. It connects us. It helps us to live. Photographer: Miguel M. Roth (Argentina) Place: Caviana, Brazil
Date: February 2007
Son: the past before your eyes A child in the arms of its father. This shows a young tradition of Rapa Nui called Haka Pei, from the hilltop Pu’i. It is a competition, where young people slip down Pu’i hill on banana trunks, a slope of 45 degrees and 120 metres length, so to confirm their manhood in the community. Photographer: Carlos Alberto Díaz Valdés (Chile) Place: Rapa Nui, Easter Island
Date: February 2014
New vein of work The urbanization of Caj贸n del Maipo in Chile, has left several muleteers with fewer jobs. In the summers and good weather seasons the muleteers have discovered a new vein of work, walking with, and hauling tourists in the mountains of the Andes; for this they have had to learn English. These two muleteers, Quico at the left and Don Ricardo at the right, loaded the luggage of tourists to return them to town, where they departed to the mountain. Photographer: Eugenia Paz (Chile) Place: Caj贸n del Maipo, Chile
Date: February 2014
X-ray of Cuba
In the foreground of the photo one can see an older, calm man with a cigar, who represents the Cuba from former times. In the background there is a rather worried younger person who represents stagnation and the necessity of reforms through his insecure posture. The photo “X-ray of Cuba” provides an overview on the one hand but shows the necessity to take directional decisions for the future on the other hand. Photographer: Diego Araya Corvalán (Chile) Place: Havana, Cuba
Date: June 2013
Divine simplicity The orange cloth, draped around the effigy of a Buddhist monk and framed against the crumbling pillars of the ancient temple, really caught my eye on a visit to the Angkor Wat temple complex. Photographer: Akshay Shah (Nairobi) Place: Siam Reap, Cambodia
Date: March 2009
A Chilean in Thailand Never had I understood the term “cultural shock” until I visited Bangkok. For my friends and me, as Chileans, every single detail of the city was like nothing we had experienced before – and we loved it. This picture reflects our first encounters with Buddhism, where my friend Mercedes tries to understand the postures of Buddha with the instinct of imitation. The passing monks on the enlightened background simply add up to the magic. Photographer: Mariana Arellano Rojas (Chile) Place: Wat Pho, Bangkok, Thailand
Date: December 2013
Faith between roots „By means of the Asian religion we can walk hand in hand with Buddha and tree roots as nations of the whole world” Photographer: Marcela Klicperová (Czech Republic) Place: Thailand
Date: May 2013
Looking Museums have changed over time due to political and social events. Nowadays, expectations and backgrounds of visitors are taken into account to give them a better insight since they come with a certain attitude. Museums are places that promote intercultural encounters and dialogues because they unite people of different countries. Many tourists visit church museums in order to learn more about the cultural heritage of humanity. Photographer: AndrĂŠs Pardo RodrĂguez (Holland) Place: Rome, Italy
Date: October 2013
Where is your God? When we travel, we come to places that, due to their particularities, represent the past and the culture of a country. The mountain landscape is a very dominant feature of our “Alpine Republic”. Summit crosses are symbols for the closeness to God. They are closest to heaven. Are these places and crosses only there for Christian mountain climbers? This picture at the summit cross shows: We’ve made it! Our efforts have not only taken us to our limits but have also brought us closer together. Photographer: Joachim Deinhofer (Austria) Place: Niklasdorf, Austria
Date: February 2014
Mukorino A Muslim woman wearing a burka chats to a man from the Akurino religious group, an African traditional religious group. They are at the Lamu market in Lamu town, Lamu Island, a predominantly Islamic town at the coast of Kenya. The Akurino can be identified by head wraps and they are mostly from the Kikuyu community from the central province of Kenya, about 600-650 km away. Photographer: Sebastian Wanzalla (Kenya) Place: Lamu, Kenya
Date: November 2013
Tolerance for a Tunisia for all This picture shows a couple, a Tunisian man and a French woman, at the beach of Ghar el Melh. He is reading the Hadith of the prophet Chaaraoui and she is peacefully sipping her beer in a swimsuit. A lesson of respect and tolerance. Photographer: Raja Abdelaziz (France) Place: Tunisia
Date: January 2003
El Kotz The photograph that I’m sending is from a serial I have been photographing in Jerusalem for five years. I am studying and watching the cultural mix that exists in the city. At the end of 2011 a light train started to work for the first time ever in Jerusalem and recently the daily life in a train became the main issue in this photo project. Photographer: Ido Cohen (Israel) Place: Jerusalem, Israel
Date: November 2013
The metro in Brussels This picture was taken in the metro in Brussels. I have lived in this city for five years and know it and its inhabitants very well. Multiculturalism in Brussels is unbelievable. You go from one district to another and you feel like being in another world. The people are proud of their Moroccan, Congolese or Italian culture. On this picture it seems as if everybody would go their own way, but the people in Brussels live together in harmony. Photographer: Sara Benbrahim (Morocco) Place: Brussels, Belgium
Date: August 2013
Momentum of transformation “Momentum of transformation” symbolizes the idea of traveling as a method of intensive spiritual growth when you go to such diverse places as New York City. People face cross-cultural communication in every step they take, so there you can feel strong synthesis of various cultures. In this city life happens on the streets, so there is no better way to illustrate this than to take a picture of pedestrians. It presents the main similarity between all these people – they are all different. Photographer: Jolita Kiznyte (Lithuania) Place: New York, USA
Date: September 2011
Shopping, Fifth Avenue, New York - Shopping, Ginza, Tokyo This photo belongs to a series that connects western and eastern culture. I travelled between New York and Tokyo to study the global trends that occur in both contemporary cities. I looked for similar urban spaces, where citizens perform the same activities. I captured one person as an “iconic representation� of a particular recognizable social group and show them together. My aim is to generate a dialogue between what is universal in humankind and the characteristic cultural expressions. Photographer: Ali Hanoon (Spain) Place: New York, Tokyo
Date: 2010, 2011
The Polish and the Moroccan I remember the feeling when I landed in Morocco: the religion, the language and the culture were like nothing I had ever seen before. I took a walk into the chaotic markets in the Medina of Fez with a Polish catholic girl. Inside the walled city labyrinth we ran into this Muslim girl who was weaving a carpet. She taught my friend how to weave and, as they worked, they exchanged their life experiences. Being a Chilean photographer, this picture represents to me a genuine intercultural encounter. Photographer: Jean Paul Dussaubat Diban (Chile) Place: Fez, Morocco
Date: June 2012
Intercultural differences and „disputes“ Differences are an asset. We engage in dialogues and exchange views. In Morocco one encounters all types of cultures and especially people from sub-Saharan countries. The front part of the picture shows that the dialogue partners get along with each other. In the second row there is an inclined line between the two, representing a difference, even a “dispute”, which the man in red in the background also personates. At the same time he is close to losing his nerves. Photographer: Saltana El Jazouli (Morocco) Place: Rabat, Morocco
Date: January 2014
Music connects people Intercultural dialogue can be best depicted by people sharing their passions. For instance, musicians cooperate freely without any limits and barriers. Photographer: Natalia Dolgowska (Poland) Place: Warsaw, Poland
Date: January 2014
Voluntary peace service These young people voluntarily put themselves out for the promotion of an intercultural dialogue that represents the hope for a better future for humanity. Photographer: Zeynep Sassi (Tunisia) Place: Tunis, Tunisia
Date: March 2013
Greca Greca, is a tribute to one of the most famous paintings by El Greco, “The Knight with his hand on his breast”. A genius born in Crete, while living in Spain. Photographer: Nieves García Barragán (Spain) Place: Badajoz, Spain
Date: August 2011
Dalkey, Ireland This picture is part of the photographic diary SE SOUVENIR, which I have been keeping since 2007 during my travels through Europe. I try to find motifs far from tourist clichĂŠs. The three white objects on the picture strangely seem to maintain a dialogue with each other: The arrow in the picture gives one direction and the bench invites to linger. The statue of the Virgin Mary subtly attracts the attention of travellers, without the need to impose. Photographer: Katharina RoĂ&#x;both (Austria) Place: Dalkey, Irleland
Date: January 2013
Love locks – a modern ritual If you have the strength to make somebody happy, do it! The world needs more of that. Photographer: Nargiz Gafarli (Azerbaijan) Place: Cologne, Germany
Date: July 2013
Lunchtime This photo displays Parisians having a chat and lunchtime. These people are random workers at “La Défense’s” offices and by sitting on the stairs, they enjoy a break, drink coffee, eat meals and talk to each other. Photographer: Barbora Becvarova (Czech Republic) Place: Paris, France
Date: February 2010
Boats in the desert Encounter of two boats in a Tunisian water desert. The photo was taken during a trip along the coasts of Tunisia. Photographer: Anna Renaud (Tunisia) Place: Tunis, Tunisia
Date: February 2013
DISCLAIMER Editor and publisher: Task Force „Dialogue of Cultures”, Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, Minoritenplatz 8, 1014 Vienna, Austria Email: dialog@bmeia.gv.at • Internet: www.bmeia.gv.at/dialogueofcultures Responsible for content : Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs (S. V) Concept: Alexander Wojda Organisation: Verena Zuschnig Design: emitto dialogmarketing Print: Digitalprintcenter, Federal Ministry of the Interior Date of publishing: June 2014 © Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs
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