26/08/2026
Double Honorable Mention at The Minimalist Photography Awards 2026 ✨
🎖️ The Illusion of Freedom — Honorable Mention in Conceptual 🎖️ Inner World — Honorable Mention in Fine Art
Two recognitions in the same edition, in two different categories.
The Illusion of Freedom was born near Bologna Airport. I was with friends, watching the planes take off, and I only had my smartphone with me. For a moment, that plane seemed imprisoned behind the barbed wire: how often we believe we are free, only to realise our freedom is limited by invisible barriers.
Inner World is an autumn evening, also in Bologna. The fogged window of a gym, and behind that glass the blurred silhouette of a young man training alone. A figure almost dissolved, yet clear in his gestures: appearance and essence coexisting, how we are perceived from the outside without ever being truly known.
Both works are growing along with me: The Illusion of Freedom was a finalist at the Eyeshot Open Call 2025 among over 20,000 images, and Inner World received an Honorable Mention at the Paris International Street Photo Awards 2025, with an exhibition in New York.
I'll say it without filters: this isn't an easy time, and it has been going on for a while. I question myself every day about the future, about my dreams, about life. It isn't a straight path, and sometimes it's frightening.
But I keep believing in art as a way of living, in sensitivity as a form of intelligence and not of fragility, in depth as a choice. In a time that settles for the surface, with photography I try to do the opposite: to stop, to look longer, to search for what lies behind the fogged glass and inside people.
❤️ Thank you to the jury for seeing something in these images. And thank you to you who believe in me: you are part of this journey more than you know.
📍 The Illusion of Freedom — Bologna, 2024 📍 Inner World — Bologna, 2025
Thank you for being here 🦚 Chiara Pavanati Digital Atelier