30 Mesmerizing Moments Caught In Pictures That Were Crowned The Best Of 2023 By The Sony World Photography Awards

Bored Panda has reached out to Edgar Martins, who won The Photographer of the Year at the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards, to learn more about his work. First, we asked him to share with us the inspiration behind the 'Our War' project and his approach to it. Edgar told us: “Our War is a previously unseen series of images produced over a period of 3 years in Libya and North Africa that forms part of an overarching project symptomatically titled 'Anton’s hand is made of guilt. No muscle or bone. He has two clinically depressed fingers and an angry thumb’.

It uses as a jumping-off point a speculative investigation into the death and disappearance of a close friend of mine, the photojournalist Anton Hammerl, during the 2011 Libyan war. As his mortal remains are missing to this day, I set out to produce a project inspired by his story but also rooted in a very simple premise: how does one tell a story when there is no witness, no testimony, no evidence, no subject? Moreover, how does one grieve in the absence of all these things?”

“By retracing Anton’s steps, some of the places he visited, the place where he met his end, by engaging with people involved in the conflict (individuals that fought in the war or their descendants, freedom fighters, ex-militia, Gaddafi loyalists, local residents, Libyan dissidents in hiding, but also individuals that didn’t experience the traumas of war directly but which were interested in sharing and enacting their stories), by finding meaningful intersections between both our journeys and understanding the motivations behind his, I was able to step into his shoes, even if momentarily.

Notwithstanding, this project is about much more than honoring my dear friend. It portrays a complex story, warped by absences, that talks of the difficulty of documenting, testifying, witnessing, remembering, and imagining. This project explores new visual representational methods and techniques to interrogate conflict and trauma and enable innovative approaches to respond to war, photographic ethics, and dealing with bereavement, loss, and missing persons.”

Next, we wanted to find out how the photographer managed to find a balance between the need to document the conflict and its impact on the people of Libya with his desire to create a portrait of Anton Hammerl. Martins answered: “This is not a documentary project, nor does it document the conflict per se, as I traveled to Libya 10 years after the civil war took place. The project was also produced in neighboring countries as there were aspects of the work that could simply not be produced in Libya.

The Libyan War is the background story of a universal story about loss and friendship. It is important to make a distinction between the reality of the situation and how I imagined this reality to be in the 10 years prior to traveling to Libya. In the absence of all of the things I mentioned previously (testimony, evidence, witness, subject, etc.), an imagined reality of the conflict, the people, and the circumstances of Anton’s demise was all I had. So I wanted these two dimensions to collide, overlap, and blur in my work. I knew from the outset that whilst I would need to retrace Anton’s physical journey I would also need to go beyond this. I needed to connect with people, find the right ‘protagonists’ and subjects, find the right approach, and ultimately weave this narrative in an engaging and ethical way.

When the full project is finally presented to the public, next year, the portraits will only be a small part of it. The project includes sound recordings, drawings, immersive AV projections, and a short film.”

Then, we wanted to find out more about some of the most significant challenges Edgar Martins encountered when photographing in Libya. The photographer said: “Mostly logistical, but also to do with access. It took a lot of planning and preparation and assembling the right team of people. And a steadfast commitment to come back again and again. It also took resources and patience.”

We were interested if the photographer encountered any ethical dilemmas while photographing in a conflict zone, and how he navigated them. Edgar explained: “This entire project was an ethical dilemma. How one talks about war, how one photographs people, how one can engender an ethical remembering of a deceased person, the issues around representation in photography, how to talk about the difficulty of documenting and testifying… all of these concerns were paramount in mind.

I’ve always had a particular concern about photography's proclivity to disavow its subjects, either inadvertently misrepresenting or outright exploiting them. When the power dynamics between photographer and subject are not kept in check it often leads to photographers producing images whose sole purpose, in my view, only serves to confirm the already held opinions within the dominant ideology about the particular subject the photographer is working on. This approach only serves to reinforce the act of photographing and photography itself as apotropaic devices.

So take the example of war, how often have we seen these tropes: the rebel as the good guy, the freedom fighter as the ideologue, the militias as the bad guys, the conflict reduced to binary polarities such as the aggressors vs. victims? The reality is always much more nuanced than this.”

“So in order to distance the viewer from the way in which it is used to consume these kinds of stereotypes, not only did I photograph the people one might expect me to, but also individuals enacting their stories. These ranged from descendants of people that fought in the conflict but that didn’t experience the horrors of war directly, local residents whose support we need for access or information and whom we’d invite along to participate in photoshoots so we could share our stories with them and learn about theirs, etc. There is a variety of differences in the work.

Some of these photographic sessions were cathartic and reconciliatory. And this made me realize that photographs don’t have to be the end goal but a means to an end. A means to bring people together and share their personal stories.

By employing this approach the viewer is never really sure who is represented in the images. And this not only disrupts the voyeurism usually inherent in the consumption of this kind of imagery but it is also a way for me to protect those I am collaborating with. There is a certain indignity in speaking for others. I’m much more interested in creating conditions in which people that may not have a voice can speak for themselves.”

Asked about the advice he could give to aspiring photographers who want to document conflicts and humanitarian crises, Edgar mentioned: “Prepare your trip carefully. Make sure you have a network of contacts on the ground and above all ask yourself if you’re the right person to tell the story you’re looking to tell. 95% of the time you aren’t.

I believe there is a place for photography in war, but we need to model a way of seeing that answers 4 key questions: How can images talk about the situation of agency and the difficulty of testifying at any precise moment in history? How can images create the conditions that enable us to imagine for ourselves? How can photographs engender ethical remembering? How can images reveal and resist at the same time?”

Lastly, we were curious to find out what his initial reaction was when Martins learned that he had won the Sony World Photography Award for Photographer of the Year. The photographer said: “I was truly overwhelmed. It took me by surprise just how emotive an experience it was. Obviously, it’s a huge honor to win such an award but the reason why it felt particularly emotive was that I got to share my friend’s story on a world stage and therefore bring attention to the family’s fight to find his remains.”