ISPA | Italian Sustainability Photo Award
To create an original and highly positioning project to bring the Italian audience of PIMCO – a multinational company in the financial field – closer to the sustainability issues expressed by the acronym ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) and expand it, also with cross-media, advertorial and phygital initiatives.
Courageous stories of sustainability
In the first three editions of ISPA, awards were given to individual images and reportages that were able to translate stories of sustainability into photography, from small communities to entrepreneurial realities to enlightened management of Italian territories and excellence.
In addition to the prizes for Best Single Photograph and Best Photographic Story, ISPA recognizes a Grant of 10,000 euros used by the winner for the production of a project to be carried out in Italy in the next six months (a funding that is unparalleled in the Italian photojournalism scene).
The winners of the third edition were announced on Nov. 17, 2022 in the Salone d’Onore of the Milan Triennale as part of “The Economy of the Future,” the sustainability festival curated by the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Each year the projects are selected by an international jury of journalism and photography professionals. In the 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions, the jury included: RAI journalist and anchor Tiziana Ferrario (chair), Martina Bacigalupo (6Mois), Emma Bowkett (Financial Times FT Weekend Magazine), Manila Camarini (D – La Repubblica), Antonio Carloni (Gallerie d’Italia – Intesa Sanpaolo), Lucy Conticello (M – Le Monde), Renata Ferri (iO Donna / RCS), Alessia Glaviano (PhotoVogue), Lars Lindermann (GEO Magazin Germany) and award-winning photographers Luca Locatelli, Davide Monteleone, Mads Nissen and Ami Vitale. The jury president of the 2023 edition was Mario Calabresi (journalist, writer and editor-in-chief of Chora Media), accompanied by Kathryn Cook (Head of Content International Committee of the Red Cross), Alice Crose (Visual Editor Vanity Fair Italia), Andreas Trampe (Senior Photo Editor Stern Magazine) and Paolo Woods (Photographer and Artistic Director Cortona On The Move).
“The sustainability I like to deal with is not only environmental but also social. It is the sustainability of ways of living, of the timing of our lives. Exactly what I saw in the previous editions and what convinced me to accept the role: the ability of the winning photographers to read today’s reality by bringing out its problems but trying to indicate possible solutions. The stories photographed portray people engaged in mending, repairing, fixing, rebuilding, creatively imagining new and different answers. They point to a new ecology of one’s time, in which one learns to make a sustainable mark on life.”
Mario Calabresi
The award is itinerant and shares its content at festivals and events in the world of photography, journalism, sustainability and communication.
The ISPA Talks format includes a thematic panel designed around the venue, with prominent guests discussing and debating ESG issues.
One relevant occasion was “Telling the Limits: Sustainability and Photojournalism” as part of Milan Digital Week, in the striking location of ADI, the Design Museum of Milan.
So was the presentation of the fourth edition of the award, which was held on January 17, 2023 in the prestigious setting of Gallerie d’Italia, a new exhibition space dedicated to visual arts and photography in the 17th-century Palazzo Turinetti in Piazza San Carlo, in the heart of Turin.
The ISPA Talk titled “Courageous Stories of Sustainability” featured talks by Mario Calabresi (ISPA 2023 jury president), Antonio Carloni (deputy director Gallerie d’Italia – Turin), Tomaso Clavarino (ISPA 2022 grant winner) and Elisa Palazzi (University of Turin climatologist, science popularizer and author).
The ISPA prize images also became a traveling photographic exhibition. The first exhibition was held in November 2022 at the Rome Science Festival, a nationally significant event that has averaged 50,000 attendees in recent editions inside the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
The next venues planned for the ISPA exhibition are Padua, Genoa and La Spezia.
In its first three years, the Italian Sustainability Photo Award has become a driving force for reaching new and growing audiences, conveying messages and values also through advertorial channels. The award is a focal point that connects brands, photographers and media, industry experts, magazines, readers, photography enthusiasts and an extended and participatory audience, i.e., a community sensitive to sustainability-related issues.
To find out more, visit the official website www.ispaward.com.
Photo
Elisabetta Zavoli – Winner Photo Story 2022
