Retrospective Fisheye x La Gacilly Photo Festival Competition

By looking at major social issues from an artistic and aesthetic standpoint, situated at the crossroads of photojournalism and contemporary photography, the La Gacilly Photo Festival has been spotlighting major environmental and social issues for 18 years. As privileged witnesses of deep-seated change, photographers are the first to raise the alarm about the state of our world. Their work provides strong, striking and memorable images that illustrate the global crisis, alter the way we see the environment and, very often, provoke changes in our behaviour.

For the last five years, the La Gacilly Photo Festival and Fisheye have demonstrated their commitment to young humanist and environmental photography through a call for entries to their joint competition, which trains the spotlight on a new generation of photographers. Offering an original point of view, they are reinventing the iconography surrounding the environment and commitment to a cause. The ambition of the Festival is to support this new generation of photographers and co-examine how these climatic and human issues are represented.

From photojournalism to contemporary photography, this new generation offers a different viewpoint on themes that are close to our relationship with the world, and are reinventing themselves in order to continue raising awareness, sharing and engaging with the public. More than ever before, ecology is the challenge of our era and the emergency of a generation. In such a context, photography also has its role to play.

Since 2016, 15 winners have been singled out for the quality of their work and their unique approach. Thanks to the competition, they have benefited from exhibitions at the Festivals in La Gacilly and Baden, Austria (since 2018), as well as from an exhibition and dissemination by the Fisheye Gallery during the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles and publications in Fisheye Magazine. The La Gacilly Photo Festival is thus committed to working alongside photographers - particularly young artists - in an effort to boost their exposure among professionals, the general public and, soon, among collectors too, thanks to fotofever.

These photographers have all gone on to develop their careers: some have joined prestigious agencies and many are now working for the national and international press or for major institutions dedicated to photography.

By blending views and sensibilities, together they deliver a magnificent panorama of the photographic writing that defines this new generation.