Snake in Sky
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PrizeHonorable Mention
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PhotographerKendal Varolgunes, Italy
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Date of Photograph16/04/2026
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Website
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Instagram
Snake in Sky isolates Zaha Hadid’s Generali Tower from the Milan skyline and places it against a dense black void. With the street, horizon, and surrounding buildings removed, the tower loses its familiar scale and becomes something harder to define: not only architecture, but a body in motion. The tight framing turns the skyscraper into a vertical fragment, where glass, shadow, and repetition begin to read as skin. Its twisting façade suggests the silent rise of a serpent, with the grid bending like scales across its surface.
Kendal Varolgunes (b. 1998) is a Kurdish architect and photographer based in Milan, whose practice interrogates the fragmentation of the modern landscape and the phenomenology of isolation. Drawing on a dual background in architectural design (Politecnico di Milano, TU Eindhoven) and a lifelong devotion to the camera, Varolgunes explores the "Isles of Modernity" that define our urban existence. His work is a search for "archipelagic thought"—a way of seeing the city not as a cohesive whole, but as a collection of autonomous singularities that define their character through their difference.
Awards AWARDS
Honorable mention - TMPA Awards, 2025
Honorable mention - TMPA Awards, 2024
Grand prize - Busan Architecture & Urban Media Competition, 2019
EXHIBITIONS & PUBLISHINGS
Group Exhibition - Street Photo Festival, Athens, 2026
Published- TMPA Lens Focus: Top Shots of the Week, 2024
Published - Al-Tiba9 ISSUE15 Print Magazine, 2024
Published - Inoventa awards obscure competition, 2020
Solo Exhibition - Orhan Peker Gallery, Balikesir, 2016
Group exhibition - Sabancı University, Istanbul ,2016