Iryna Vlasiuk - The Best B&W Photo Project Of The Year 2024

Hello Iryna, you are the "Best B&W Photo Project" 2024. For this, you won $500. What do you think about being selected as a winner among hundreds of other photographers ?

It was very pleasant and unexpected for me. I am very glad that the judges appreciated my work so highly. When participating in competitions, you never know which work will be remembered by the jury and will be awarded, especially when the topic is free. Usually many interesting and strong projects are sent. Therefore, it is also a kind of luck. I think I have a good intuition.

Can you tell us about your background and how you became a photographer ?

I have been taking pictures for a long time. I started with commercial projects - weddings, individual and family shootings. We worked together with my husband. Then I wanted more creativity in my work and I started shooting fine art and nude photography, showing the human body as art. In 2021 Snap Collective publishing published a book with my photos "Persepcion". It was their first project and my first book. I am very proud of our cooperation.

With the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, my exhibition activity began. When the Russian troops started bombing Kyiv, my mother and I evacuated to the west of Ukraine. While there, I joined the Ukrainian Woman Photographers Organization, which organized a charity NFT collection to help victims of the war. Together with them, I took part in several exhibitions abroad.

This year I graduated from the school of conceptual photography MYPH. I rethought my approach to photography. In addition to the aesthetic, artistic component, I wanted to work on deeper meanings. It was a great time to experiment and find a new visual language. It was during my studies that I started working on the « States » project.

What about the « States » series, how did you build this project and what do you plan to do in the future ?

I wanted to express my inner feelings with the help of visual images. Since we are all connected, have the ability to empathize, other people can experience similar states. The filming of this project was a kind of non-verbal communication between me and the heroes of my artworks. I tried to feel the person in front of me and express it in a certain visual image according to my own feelings.

This series was created with the purpose of symbolic reproduction of internal states, opens the door to the individual and collective unconscious. According to the principle of metaphorical cards, each viewer has the opportunity to freely interpret the photos, highlighting for himself those aspects that are important to him at the moment, to better understand his manifestations and relationships with those around him. It is a kind of art therapy, a platform for reflection and self-discovery through art.

Analyzing the image, the observer can become more aware of his inner emotional landscapes.
Looking at the works that I sent to the competition, you can see that they are quite depressing. There is nothing surprising here, because we (me and the models) live in a war. I did not focus on this traumatic fact, but it is clear that it is present in the background. I continue to shoot this project. It also contains works about the strength of the spirit, transformation, rebirth, inner light in dark times.

As a winner of our photo competition you will join the jury of our photo competition for the next edition, what advice can you give to photographers who want to apply for next year ?

The main thing in creativity is to be honest, to create on those topics that really excite, disturb, evoke emotions, and inspire. In short, are important to you. If you are in doubt about which of your projects to send to the competition, see who won in previous years. What is the overall aesthetic, style. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it can.
Believe in yourself and your art and keep creating !

Iryna Vlasiuk (@vls_aesthetics) is the winner of the B&W PA 2024 Grand Prize, Iryna lives and works in kyiv. Her photography is distinguished by its unique writing borrowed from a remarkable aesthetic with themes dealing with bodies, their interconnection and the dialogue of the spiritual with the physical. In 2021, Snap Collective editions published her first photo book: "Perception".