“I was just so focused on having an aperitif with my friend,” Davide Monteleone says. It happens to the best of us – you’re indulging in, say, an Aperol Spritz and a natter with a mate, world blocked out, and before you know it, the seasons have changed and your shoes have worn through. Well, we exaggerate, however, seven missed calls was what the Swiss-based, Italian-hailing photographer had waiting for him when he emerged from a mate date one evening this year. And, the calls were certainly worth returning. Karin Rehn-Kaufmann was on the other end (Art Director and Chief Representative of Leica Galleries International), simply trying to reach him with the news that he’d won one of photography’s most distinguished gongs – The Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

The namesake accolade of Oskar Barnack, the man responsible for inventing German camera-making institution Leica’s defining product, the world’s first 35mm film camera, released in 1925 – The LOBA is synonymous with pictorial innovation of the most enduring magnitude. The latest ceremony saw photographers and press gather on 10th October at the brand’s Weltzar HQ, a Disneyland of sorts for any photographer, complete with a museum, gallery, archive, factory, hotel and even a café selling branded patisserie. Davide and Maria Guțu – this year’s recipient of the LOBA Newcomer Award, a counterpart nod for rising talent – were chosen out of around 250 submissions nominated by 80 international photography experts. 

The award scours the globe for the most perceptive, prescient visual storytellers, and Davide’s series “Critical Minerals – Geography of Energy” more than fits the bill. His extended study documents the geopolitical, social and ecological fall-out of the very pressing but monumental shift in energy extraction from fossil fuels to renewable sources. “I was basically keen to understand: the green transition, sustainability and net zero goals – what does it mean?,” he tells Wonderland. “It’s a very important, crucial issue for us as humans and for the planet. However, it’s not like switching a switch.” Using the examples of copper, lithium and cobalt mining in Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia, the series presents a window into the reality of how such a change in infrastructure is experienced by the landscapes and humans who intersect with it. 

In an early research phase, Davide encountered academic and scientific interrogations of the subject matter, but “There was no cohesive visual work,” he says. “So I thought, ‘This is actually something that deserves to be told.’”  He hopes the award’s platform will give him the opportunity to engage audiences beyond the fleeting encounters they may have with the issue via digital media. “I have the possibility for people to spend 10 or maybe 15 minutes viewing an exhibition of my work. That’s an enormous amount of time given how we process information nowadays. And then people will take whatever they want, it’s a free choice.” 

While Davide’s project took him across the globe, Maria’s, “Homeland”, as the title suggests, found its seed in her own life, investigating the significance of one’s origins, via lyrical portraits capturing often young subjects in her native Moldova. The series draws on her own upbringing, raised by grandparents as, like many in the country, her parents emigrated to seek out economic security during her childhood. “Every time I photograph, I try to find a new story that inspires me,” she tells us. She would observe the quiet unravelling of youth in the country’s villages, honing in on her subjects’ affinity with their space, evoking, at times, a sense of longing for distant family, something she could relate to. “I  would ask them about some memories that they have to make a connection with them,” she explains, “And, I try to have an inner level of communication with the subject. I ask them what their dreams are?” 

Perhaps a younger Maria’s would have been to receive the very recognition her work is now garnering on an international stage such as The LOBA. “I always was inspired by photographers who were using Leica cameras and photographers who would win this contest,” she says. But her raison d’être is less concerned with public adulation. Simply, “I have a lot of pleasure when I do photographic communication with the world,” she says. “So my mission is to be always curious.”  

Find more information on The Leica Oskar Barnack Award here.