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ALPA and photo basel are proud to announce the first recipient of the newly founded Award.
ALPA and photo basel are proud to announce the Japanese Photographer Yoko Ikeda as the first recipient of the "ALPA Award". In cooperation with a private collector from Zürich, ALPA and Photo Basel are awarding a purchase award for the best artist at photo basel, the ALPA AWARD 2018. This is the first year the ALPA AWARD is presented to an outstanding photographer, but it is intended as a reoccurring feature of photo basel. Yoko Ikeda, The ALPA AWARD winner, was announced yesterday at photo basel and one work will be purchased from the gallery representing the artist by the private collector. In addition, ALPA® presents a cash prize or ALPA® camera system to the winning photographer.
Sadly the artist could not be present yesterday at the award ceremony, she was represented by Martijn van Pieterson from gallery Ibasho in Antwerp (NL).
"Annemarie Zethof and Martijn van Pieterson, the Dutch co-owners of Ibasho Gallery, which is devoted to Japanese photography, are to bring works by seven contemporary Japanese women, both emerging and established photographers. “We thought that an all-female program would be something quite unique,” Mr. van Pieterson said. “It’s a male-dominated world, not only in Japan, but we felt there are really excellent female photographers out there that haven’t achieved a platform yet.”
"For me photography is neither a way to record, nor a method of explanation of either things or phenomena.
Photography is a form of experimentation to create a new world through the lens while consciously working with the ambiguity of visual sensation, as well as colours, composition, and fluctuations of perspective.
Things that exist in daily life or that can be found anywhere, these are so humble and casual. Therefore they tend to be considered as meaningless.
My desire is to make precious and special images out of these subjects. Extracting their beauty through the functions of my camera. Then transferring it to a two-dimensional print. Also random factors count a lot.
Sometimes this unpredictable result brings my photographs to a dimension that is far beyond what I had imagined."
