Not from here

• Prize
• Photographer
  Felicia Simion, Romania
• Socials
• Website
  http://www.feliciasimionphotography.com

When I first arrived in Deauville, I didn’t know exactly who I was in
relation to the city – was I tourist? Was I an artist? Was I Romanian?
All I knew is that I was not from there. I came as a stranger; in terms
of anthropology, I represented "the other".
I decided to express the strange–stranger binomial by wearing three
costumes which would cover my whole body. I was able to immerse
myself in various locations of Deauville and interact with them both
physically and emotionally. The beach, the Pompeian baths, the
orphanage, they all seemed exotic to me and perhaps I was just as
exotic to them.
Through my "second skin" I could see only partially, like from within a
veil, the faces of the people who passed by. The costumes made me
both visible and invisible; yet nobody could really see beyond my
opaque skin.

• Biography
  I am a 24-year-old visual artist and freelance photographer living in Bucharest, Romania, constantly looking for new ways to nurture self-expression. The roots of my love for art is to be found in my childhood and adolescence, when I engaged with painting, illustration, music and writing. At the age of 13 I irrecuperably fell for photography, whilst browsing online and coming across the works of both Magnum photographers and young visual artists, whom I felt inspired by. My interests concerning photography gravitate around having a fine art approach to each genre I focus on, from portraiture t
• Awards
  In 2016 I graduated from the Bucharest National University of Arts, Photography and Video department, and in 2018 I successfully finished an MA degree in Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Bucharest. In 2017 I was chosen to be one of the five young photographers to attend a photography residency in Deauville, France, which resulted in the creation of a project exhibited during the Planche(s) Contact festival. Also, in the same year, I was one of the finalists of the Saatchi Selfie competition, having my work shown during the "Selfie to Self-Expression" exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. In 2016, I was selected by PhotoBoite as one of their “30 under 30 Women Photographers”. Over the years, my work has been awarded or commended in competitions such as Paris Prix de la Photographie, Sony World Photography Awards, D&AD Photography Awards, Moscow International Foto Awards, IPA. My images have been published in print and online publications among which: The New York Times, Fisheye Magazine, The Pulitzer Center Blog, Der Spiegel, Calvert Journal, Lens Culture, Il Post.