Celebration of Photography 2025

With a remarkable guest list and thrilling programme, the Celebration of Photography marked yet another wonderful occasion in the Leica centennial celebrations, during which Leica’s history has been lauded under the motto “100 Years of Leica: Witness to a Century”. The Leica Oskar Barnack Award set a fabulous stage for these festivities on 9 October. All former award winners were invited to Wetzlar to attend the 45th edition of the prestigious photography prize. A big get-together with a podium discussion and the evening presentation of the LOBA awards to this year’s winners Alejandro Cegarra and Serghei Duve were the highlight.

Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2025

This year saw Alejandro Cegarra pick up the main LOBA prize. Born in Venezuela and living in Mexico, the photographer won the award for his series The Two Walls. The winner in the LOBA Newcomer category was German photographer Serghei Duve for his series Bright Memory. For the 45th edition of LOBA, around 120 experts from the international photography scene in approximately 50 countries had recommended their favourites to the LOBA jury. Both winning series and 10 more series from the entire LOBA shortlist will be showcased in an impressive display at the Ernst Leitz Museum until January 2026.

Alejandro Cegarra

Photographer Alejandro Cegarra travelled the borderland between USA and Mexico for this long-term project. In his empathic black-and-white pictures, he draws attention to the plight of migrants and refugees and sheds light on their dramatic situation. Mexico was once known as a safe haven for asylum seekers. In recent years, however, the country has entered into a partnership with anti-immigration politicians in the United States. In this series, Cegarra focusses on the struggles of migrants and their families who are suffering under harsh and inhumane conditions at Mexico’s border.

The winning series was suggested by the Columbian photographer and LOBA nominator Federico Rios Escobar.

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Serghei Duve

In a very personal series, photographer Serghei Duve, who started life in the Republic of Moldova, explores his family’s enduring connection to Transnistria – a territory that declared independence from Moldova in 1990, yet remains unrecognised internationally and supported solely by Russia. In his pictures, he tries to visualise the sentiment captured by the Russian expression “bright memory”, reflecting everyday life shaped by nostalgia and division.

The series was nominated for the LOBA Newcomer category for young photographers up to the age of 30 by the Visual Journalism and Documentary Photography department at the Hochschule Hannover – University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

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LOBA Winner and Newcomer Series 2025