KOLGA Tbilisi Photo

PHOTO CONTEST

From February 10, 2025, to March 15, 2025, the largest and most prestigious photo competition in Georgia is announced as part of KOLGA TBILISI PHOTO. The jury members will select the best photo projects and determine the winners in each category. This year the nominations are as follows:

Documentary Series 

Reportage 

Conceptual Photo Project

Best One-Shot /Single Image/

Mobile Photo /One shot/

In the Conceptual Series category also allows the upload of AI-generated projects.

Jury members are:

Nigel Dickinson /UK/

Tina Schelhorn /Germany/

Wolfgang Zurborn /Germany/

Richard Bram /USA/

Dina Oganova /Georgia/

Vince Cianni /USA/

The KOLGA AWARD is $6,000. The winners of the first three categories receive 1500-1500 US dollars each. In the Best One Shot category, the winner will receive $1,000, and in the Mobile Photo category, the winner of One Shot will receive $500. 

The winners of "KOLGA TBILISI PHOTO AWARD" 2025 will be announced on May 2, 2025. 

From May 2, Kolga Tbilisi Photo will hold local and international exhibitions.

Learn more about terms and conditions

Nigel Dickinson

Nigel Dickinson is a British born documentary photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker working for 30 years in the field. His work focuses on the environment, human condition, marginalized communities, sustainable development, identity and culture. Dickinson is also known for his environmental portraits, cuisine, editorial and travel photography. He is also a specialist film and tv stills photographer, and experienced with aerial and landscape photography. He works across editorial and commercial platforms, with art directors, independently originating and researching material, and alongside journalists and writers. He has won several awards. ‘Deforestation in South East Asia’ took UNEP bronze prize at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. ‘Mad Cows in Britain’ won a World Press award in the news category in 1997. ‘Roma Gypsies’ won runner up in the W.Eugene Smith Award in 2000. The book ‘Meat’ was shortlisted for the European Publishers award in 2006. 'Railtracks in Cambodia' won the feature award at UK Press Photographers Year 2008. In 2011 his series 'Smokey Mountain' was selected for the Critical Mass Award, which will be shown in April 2012 at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR. Dickinson has two published monographs. The first ‘Hanging On By Your Fingernails’ about the Great Miners Strike 1984/5, was by Spokesman Press UK in 1987. ‘Sara. Le pelerinage des gitans’, about the annual French Gypsy Pilgrimmage, was published by Actes Sud, France in 2003. Several

books of his work documenting visual artists, including the Italian painter Marco Nereo Rotelli and Mexican sculptor Sebastian, Linz based Stadwerkstatt artist group, Klaus Rinke and Joachim Eckl have been published.

Features have been published regularly by magazines including National Geographic, Figaro, Mare, Geo, Stern, Paris Match, D-Republicca, La Vanguardia, The New York Times. Marie Claire, Vogue, Spiegel, Time, Newsweek, New Scientist, The Guardian, Sunday Times, and The Independent.

He has shot photography campaigns for Greenpeace across South East Asia, Amnesty international in Centra America, Friends of the Earth in Borneo, The IAEA in Chernobl, Oxfam in Honduras, Christian Aid in Africa, Children Direct in Bosnia, Ayuda en Accion in Honduras, The Red Cross and Crescent Societies in Bosnia and Honduras He has directed films including 'Energy Today' for the International Energy Agency and 'The Solar Power Village' for Tamera 'Um Mondo Humanitario". Solo exhibitions have been exhibited at Arles Rencontres International, Visa Pour L'Image, Krakow Photo Month, Moving Walls Documentary Series,

www.nigeldickinson.com

UK

Nigel Dickinson

Tina Schelhorn

Tina Schelhorn is the founding director and curator of Galerie Lichtblick, Cologne, celebrating its 35th year as a non-profit organization for contemporary photography having presented over 300 exhibitions (together with Wolfgang Zurborn). 

She organized the festival Internationale Fotoszene Köln (1990-1996), curated and organized the festival Internationale Fototage Herten (1995-2001) with International Prize for Young Photojournalism and in 2005, curated Internationale Fototage Mannheim/ Ludwigshafen with 140 exhibitions, with a special of 84 on Contemporary American Photography. Since 2012 she works with Kolga Tbilisi Photo as curator and organizer of the education program. 

Tina has been a portfolio reviewer and has exchanged exhibitions with international festivals: Arles/France, Braga/Portugal, Houston/USA, Madrid/Spain, Milano/Italy, Noorderlicht/NL, Odense/Denmark, Perpignan/France, Plovdiv+Sofia/Bulgaria, Portland/USA, Sundsvall/Norway, Birmingham/UK, Sao Paulo/Brazil, Tampere/Finland, Lodz/Poland, Seoul/South Korea, Budapest/Hungary, Athens/Greece, Vienna/Austria, Tbilisi/Georgia and Shanghai/China. 

Tina is Juror for Critical Mass since its beginning, Center/Santa Fe, Backlight Festival and others. Her websites and exhibition projects Images against War (since 2003) and Images against Walls (since 2009) feature more than 800 international photographers.

www.lichtblicknet.com

www.imagesagainstwar.com

www.imagesagainstwalls.com

Germany

Tina Schelhorn

Wolfgang Zurborn

Wolfgang Zurborn is born 1956 in Ludwigshafen/Rhein. Very early he realized his fascination for photography and so he studied at Bavarian State School of Photography in Munich from 1977 to 1979 and at the Technical High School in Dortmund by professor Hans Meyer-Veden from 1979 to 1984. 1985 he got the Otto-Steinert-Fellowship of the German Society of Photography (DGPh) as support for his project People Pictures – Picture People, which he presented 1987 at the Folkwang Museum in Essen. Beside his own art work he is continuously interested in communicating the richness of contemporary photography. Together with Tina Schelhorn he is running the Gallery Lichtblick in Cologne since 25 years, showing international photography in more than 150 exhibitions. The Lichtblick School was founded in 2010. Since 1998 he is in the board of directors of the German Photographic Academy (DFA). He is also teaching photography in Berlin, Braunschweig, Florence and 2006 as a guest professor at the academy in Bremen. Solo shows of his work has been presented all over the world. In 2009 Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg showed a retrospective exhibition including black&white work from the 80th and colour photographs from the series China! Which China? and Drift (German Photo Book Prize 2008). He also participated in important group shows, like On the Body and other Things – German photography of the 20th century. About all the different photographic projects of Wolfgang Zurborn like dressur real, In the Labyrinth of Signs and In the Centre of the Speed are existing book publications.

www.wolfgangzurborn.de

Germany

Wolfgang Zurborn

Richard Bram

Born in Philadelphia, U.S.A., in 1952, Richard Bram grew up in Ohio, Utah and Arizona. A series of lack-lustre jobs led him across the country to Louisville, Kentucky, where in 1984 he lost his head and became a professional photographer, building his early practice in public relations, public events, performance and portrait work. Among many highlights of this phase of his career was for 12 years being the official photographer for both the Kentucky Derby Festival and the Louisville Orchestra. Moving to London in 1997, Bram concentrated on street photography, working with classical musicians, and other personal photographic projects. There in 2001 Bram became one of the founding members of iN-PUBLiC.com, the premiere international street photographers' collective, arguably the catalyst for the great contemporary revival of the genre.

Returning to the States in 2008, Bram now lives in New York City and continues to work in the public arena of the street.

Bram’s work has been seen in over 20 solo exhibitions through the years in locations as diverse as America, Germany, Lithuania, Mexico, Scotland, and England as well as group exhibitions around the globe. In 2011 Bram curated “From Distant Streets,” an exhibition of 29 international street photographers at Galerie Hertz in Louisville. As well being regularly published in magazines both traditional and digital, he regularly writes and lectures on Street Photography, most recently at “Street Parade,” part of the 2014 Paris “Mois de la Photo.” He has given Street Photography workshops in such diverse locations as the Tate Modern and Tate Liverpool in the UK, New York, Bangkok, Tel Aviv, as well as the 2012 KOLGA Tbilisi Photo week. His work is in institutional, corporate, and personal collections, including the Museum of London, the Museum of the City of New York, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Endowment for the Arts in Wasnhington, DC, the George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and the University of Louisville Photographic Archives.

www.richardbramphoto.com

www.in-public.com/RichardBram

USA

Richard Bram

Dina Oganova

Documentary photographer, educator and bookmaker. Based in her hometown, Tbilisi. Working on a personal, long term projects mostly in her and post-soviet countries,focused on women’s and young girls’ rights,social and political topics. In 2011 won KOLGA TBILISI PHOTO special author prize.  In 2012 won her first Production Grant from Open Society Foundation to Individual photographers from Central Asia, The South Caucasus ,Afghanistan, Mongolia and Pakistan and in the same year attend the workshop with Thomas Dworzak (Magnum Photos ),Yuri Kozirev (Noor Images) ,Adrian Kelterborn and Andrei Polikanov.  In 2013 was selected among world 12 best young photographers to attend World Press Photo‘s Joop Swart Masterclass.  It should be noted that Dina was first Georgian photographer who was ever selected and attended this event.  In 2014 was selected as one of 30 best women photographers under the age of 30.  In 2015 from PDN was named among 30 best emerging photographers to watch under the age of 30 and in the same year was finalist at Wallis Annenberg Prize.In 2016 was selected as APAD grant finalist.  In 2017 won European Union Prize for Journalism for the Best Documentary photo.  In 2018 won Multimedia Production Lab Grants for South Caucasian Female Photographers and Grant from Women’s     Fund.In 2019 Won “Litera Award” for the best documentary book of the year “sHEROes” collaboration with writer Salome Benidze.In 2020 was selected as one of the finalist in International Women in Photography with her project #MeToo. In 2021 won an Award for Georgian equality champions for the same project as best visual production. In 2022 for the second time, won European Union Prize for best documentary photo reflecting EU Values for project “Mother Ukraine”.  Her most famous long term projects are: “I Am Georgia“, “My Place “, “Frozen Waves“, “#MeToo”  was exhibited around the world. Dina Oganova is an author of the first Georgian handmade limited edition in 87 copies photo book “My Place”, which is in the personal collection of several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Device always : "TAKING PHOTOS WITH LOVE"

www.Dikarka.Ge

Georgia

Dina Oganova

Vince Cianni

Documentary photographer Vincent Cianni graduated from Penn State University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and SUNY New Paltz. He teaches photography at Parsons The New School of Design, NYC. Cianni’s documentary work explores community and memory, the human condition, and the use of image and text. We Skate Hardcore was published by NYU Press and the Center for Documentary Studies in 2004. His photographs have been exhibited and reside at LA County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Photographers’ Gallery, London; the 7th Int. Photography Festival in Mannheim; and George Eastman House. A major survey of his work was exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York in 2006. He is founder/director of Newburgh Community Photo Project, a grassroots community organization teaching photography and activism to young creatives in Newburgh, NY, where he lives and photographs.  http://vincentcianni.com/

USA

Vince Cianni