The Photoworks magazine reaches 20,000 people every issue.
Selected photographers will also receive a year-long Photoworks membership and bespoke mentoring from the team.
Ioanna Sakellaraki was chosen as the winner of the Photoworks/Spectrum Photography and Graduate Print Award.
She will receive a £200 printing credit from Spectrum Photographic.
“I am excited and honoured to have been awarded the first Photoworks/Spectrum Photography and Graduate Print Award with my long-term series The Truth is in the Soil,” said Sakellaraki.
“I am very thankful to both Photoworks and Spectrum for acknowledging my work and I highly appreciate this great opportunity of showcasing it further through their networks.”
The Truth is in the Soil
Sakellaraki is a Greek photographer based between London and Brussels.
The Truth is in the Soil is an exploration of traditional Greek funerary rituals.
Specifically, the contextualisation of new mechanisms of death through language, images and feelings in contemporary Greece.
At the same time, it is a work about grief, a way to come to terms with the death of her father.
In attempting to work through her grief, Sakellaraki ended up on a journey through remembrance and memory loss.
“To me, these images work as vehicles for mourning perished ideals of vitality, prosperity and belonging,” she said.
Sakellaraki’s intention was for the images to express ‘something further than their subjects by creating a space where death can exist’.
She intensifies this tangible sense of separation by blending the real with the imaginary.
There is no foreground and no background – the images are removed from three-dimensionality.
The human figure depicted opens the images up to the outside world, functioning as a transition between the tendency to shy away from death and the establishment of a new, more open relationship with the end that everyone eventually meets.
Sakellaraki received an MA from the Royal College of Art in London.
Photography+ Graduates Edition
The full list of graduates featured in the special edition is:
- Ana Blumenkron, Foreplay
- Anargyros Drolapas, Lernaean Hydra
- Daphne van de Velde, Worry About Moisture Escaping The Fruit
- Elliott Cole, A Hull To Hold The Waves At Bay
- Eva Watkins, Synchronised Swimming
- Ioanna Sakellaraki, The Truth is in the Soil
- Jessica Nap, Extra Normal, Extra Ordinary
- Jialin Long, Red Illuminates
- Silvy Crespo, The Land of Elephants
- Sneha Soodamani, Two Lives, Boundless Love
To view more of their work, visit photoworks.org.uk/photography-plus.