Julya Hajnoczky is a contemporary artist based in Calgary. Equipped with a camper and workspace known as the Al Fresco Science Machine, she has explored numerous Canadian ecosystems from Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta to the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in British Columbia and Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories.

The Prefix Prize includes a solo exhibition at Toronto’s Contact Photography Festival. See it at Urbanspace Gallery through July 27.

First place photo competition winner Roberta Vagliani took this image in a school in Zanzibar, where there are no desks, chairs or school supplies. All these little girls own is a notebook and their memory. Knowledge is passed on to them by a single master.

Véronique De Viguerie captured a young couple on their wedding day, presenting what might have been a traditional wedding portrait, were it not for the stark backdrop of the devastated cityscape of Mosul, Iraq. A poignant depiction of love and war encapsulated within a single frame was the second place winner.

Lieven Neirinck captured a decisive moment in this striking black and white street shot taken in Sanaa, Yemen. In the frame, two men identically dressed in white walks away from us, about to disappear into the shadows of an alley. The skillfully arranged lines in this image contribute to its perfect composition, for third place in the competition.

Joseph-Philippe Bevillard was asked by the family to photograph an 8 year old girl’s holy communion and captured a behind the scenes look at Aunt Doreen putting socks on Ellie-Jean in an Irish kitchen before the ceremony in Galway. The niece gazes at the photographer, seemingly displeased with being caught in a moment of being treated like a child.

There are so many more exceptional photos in this run of winners. See them all here.

The six expert judges were: Clare Freestone, Curator Photography Department National Portrait Gallery, London UK; Ann Jastrab Executive Director, Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, CA; Klavdij Sluban,Photographer, Founder Le Masterclass; Dewi Lewis Publisher, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society; Priyo Widdi, Photographer, Winner All About Photo Awards 2023 and Sandrine Hermand-Grisel Photographer, Founder & Editor of All About Photo, have evaluated thousands of entries from all over the world

Nika Belianina, a mid-career artist, photographer and seasoned filmmaker, brings a surrealist twist to her cinematic photography with her exhibition ‘Enchanted Journeys of Desire’, as part of the 2024 Contact Photography Festival (go to her exhibition works here)

Through movement and predominantly in-camera techniques, Belianina creates characters full of magic and cinematic mystery, festival notes say.

She is represented by Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto, where the solo exhibition takes place through June 1. Below, from the gallery’s Instagram, a look behind the scenes ar Belianina’s cinematic process in the making of ‘Magnitude’ – a tribute to the incredible magnitude of nature and a recognition that there are forces beyond our power.

Nika Belianina’s website here.

About Nika Belianina here.

The exhibition at the McMichael includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in those decades. He recorded life in Anishinaabe, Cree, and Anisininew communities far north of Lake Superior, in the territory along James and Hudson Bay.

Employed by the Ontario Department of Land and Forests, Macfie spent more than a decade traveling across lakes, rivers, forests, and tundra, becoming familiar with both the land and the Indigenous communities, capturing with his camera the activities, warmth, and resilience of the people he met.

Curated  by nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) author Paul Seesequasis at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the exhibition is titled People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie.

The exhibition is part of the Contact Photography Festival (the Macfie exhibition runs May 11-Nov 17 at The McMichael in Kleinberg, Ontario)

Archives of Ontario fonds description of John Macfie’s 1390 photographs, negatives and slides.