JURY
The awarding of the fellowships and the prize is decided by an independent jury of five renowned Hungarian and international professionals. The work of the jury is supported by a secretary, who has no right to vote. The award judging process is completed through a series of online and in-person private sessions conducted in English. The submissions are not anonymized throughout the judging procedure. For each entry, the materials are assessed by two juries: when submitting the entry, the first jury chooses the three fellows, and in the next year, another jury selects the grand prize winner out of the three fellows. Thus, each jury selects three fellows from the entries submitted in the given year, as well as a grand prize winner out of the three fellows of the previous year.
The members of the Capa Grand Prize Hungary jury in 2020:
Photo: Katalin Lányi
Zsolt Petrányi
President of the jury, art historian, head of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery
Zsolt Petrányi has been involved in contemporary art since 1996. He started his career in the Hungarian National Gallery, and then he moved on to the Kunsthalle Budapest as a curator. Following his work as art director at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Dunaújváros, he was the director of the Kunsthalle Budapest between 2005 and 2011. He has worked at the Hungarian National Gallery since 2011, where he also explores the arts of the 1960s and the 1980s, besides contemporary art, and organizes exhibitions. He was the curator of the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale two times: he organized the Little Warsaw project The Body of Nefertiti in 2003, and Gyula Várnai’s exhibition Peace on Earth! in 2017. He was the national officer of the Hungarian Pavilion between 2005 and 2011. Besides his organizing activities, he has been holding courses and giving lectures at the IBS, the KREA, the MOME, the Contemporary Collectors’ Academy, the Műtárgy.com website, as well as the Budapest Art Mentor program. His interest is mostly focused on contemporary photography, and from time to time he shares his opinion about the Hungarian and international state of this medium through exhibitions, articles and lectures.
Simon Bainbridge has worked in arts journalism for nearly 30 years, serving as editor of BJP since 2003, transforming it from a weekly trade journal into an award-winning monthly, showcasing the best in contemporary photography from around the world. He initiated BJP’s annual talent platform, Ones To Watch, its International Photography Award, and Portrait of Britain, the country’s largest annual public exhibition. He has also curated three photography exhibitions, worked as an external assessor at education institutions including The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and École cantonale d’art de Lausanne. His first book, Magnum Artists: When Great Photographers Meet Great Artists, is published by Laurence King on 24 August.
Simon Bainbridge
Editorial Director, British Journal of Photography
Gintaras Česonis
curator, Kaunas Photography Gallery, Residency and Publishing House, associate professor at the Vilnius Art Academy, head of Lithuanian Photographers’ Association
Gintaras Česonis graduated in Art History at the Vytautas Magnus University, studied photography in Kaunas photography school and at the L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. In 2009 he started working as the Head of Lithuanian Photographers’ Association’s Kaunas department, where he successfully started a gallery reconstruction, converting the gallery space into an important national multifunctional center including education, residency and publishing activities. Responsible for the Kaunas Photography Gallery and the international art residency program, he curated various solo and group exhibitions, produced around 10 photobooks of Lithuanian and foregin photographers. Since 2009 he serves as an expert in portfolio reviews at various local and international photography events. Since 2016 he works as the head of the Lithuanian Photographers’ Association and coordinates gallery spaces and various events around the country.
Verena Kaspar-Eisert is an expert in international portfolio reviews, lecturer at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, gives workshops and is a member of various juries. Her curatorial work includes collaboration with artists such as Alec Soth, Elina Brotherus, Martin Parr, Alix Marie, SMITH, Rinko Kawauchi, Joel Meyerowitz, Nobuyoshi Araki, Jürgen Teller and Éva Szombat. She studied art history in Vienna with a focus on contemporary fine arts and photography. Her professional career began at Galerie Knoll and Galerie Krinzinger and she freelanced in numerous exhibition projects from 2003. From 2005 to 2011 she was exhibition manager and curator at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna. From 2011 to 2014 she was director of the gallery OstLicht, in addition from 2012 to 2014 she was director of the private photo museum WestLicht, Vienna. Since 2014 she has been curator at KUNST HAUS WIEN and FOTO WIEN since 2018.
Verena Kaspar-Eisert
curator KUNST HAUS WIEN and FOTO WIEN
Klára Szarka
curator, photo historian
After receiving her MA, she founded the photo gallery of the Budapest University of Technology, and she contributed to the launching of the Hungarian Press Photo Exhibition. She taught the history of photography in the Prater Street Vocational School and in the Szellemkép Szabadiskola. She is the curator of the Budapest Photo Festival, and the head of the photojournalist school of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists. She is the curator in charge of Károly Hemző’s and Éva Keleti’s estates, and also the secretary of the Hemző Károly Foundation and Award. She is a member of the Hungarian Society for the History of Photography (she was president of the association between 2011 and 2018). She has been publishing works on photography for three decades, and she has worked as the editor and editor-in-chief of several professional journals. In the past two decades, she has been involved in several significant exhibitions as an independent curator in the Ludwig Museum, the Hungarian National Museum, the Kunsthalle, the MODEM, and the Capa Center. She was involved in the work of the photography board of the Hungarian National Cultural Fund, as well as the board of the József Pécsi József Photography Grant.
István Virágvölgyi studied freehand drawing, desktop publishing and photography and earned a master’s degree from library and information studies at Eötvös Loránd University. He worked at the leading Hungarian news portal Origo first as photo editor and then as head of photography between 2007 and 2011 after which he joined MTI Hungarian News Agency as head of the photo desk. Since 2014 he works at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (Budapest, Hungary), he is the secretary of the Robert Capa Photography Grand Prize Hungary. He also lectures about documentary photography and photo editing at the Budapest Metropolitan University.
István Virágvölgyi
curator, secretary of the Robert Capa Photography Grand Prize Hungary
