Lucia Ganieva

After having tried a career in the fashion branch Lucia Ganieva started her studies at the Foto Academy Amsterdam in 2004. Already in her first year at the academy she was awarded with an extra ward in the contest for the Fotogram Awards, a contest yearly organized by the academy for students and amateur photographers.

Even before she graduated she made some very interesting series of photographs. She was invited to exhibit them in a well known Dutch gallery, and she won a gold award in the prestigious PANL Awards contest.

In May 2007 Lucia graduated with an honours degree (cum laude). Right after her graduation she looked out for possibilities to promote her work.

In July 2007 she went to Arles to participate in the portfolio viewings, part of the internationally well known festival Rencontres d’Arles.

Her participation was quite successful. Two of the expert viewers chose her work as best portfolio, each for a different series of images. There she also met with Mr. M. Schilt from the Dutch publisher Mets & Schilt, who agreed to publish a book with one of her photo-series (Sunset of Fame).

The publisher is internationally recognised and has been publishing quite a lot of important editions.

Further in 2007 Lucia was a prize winner in the IPA contest, with a first and a second prize in the category Portraiture. The IPA contest is a very big contest, organized in the USA, with over 40.000 participants. On top of her merits one of her photographs was chosen for the ‘Best of Show’ exhibition, a choice of 35 photographs to be exhibited all around the world in several big cities during a one year tour.

In 2008 she also already has achieved several successes. She was nominated for the awards in two Dutch competitions, the Photo Academy Awards and the PANL Awards. In the French Px3 contest she was awarded with an honourable merit.

For the Sony World Photography Awards she was chosen on the shortlist of 10 best entries in the category Portraiture, out of over 76.000 competitors.

Her work is exhibited during the Moscow Photo Biennale (Russia) and the Bucharest Biennale BB3 (Romania), besides a range of smaller manifestations.

A number of magazines in different countries have published her work.

Recently in a competition opened by the Dutch foundation Fotodok Lucia has won a stipendium of € 2500,00 to do a new project, that will be exhibited in September 2008 in Utrecht (NL).