This year’s Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA) has gone to Russian photographer Damir Faizulin. The winning work is “Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves,” a series shot in the mountain regions of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. Leica announced the winner on October 8 in Wetzlar, Germany. Before turning to the winning work, it is worth looking at what this award is. Its name marks the starting point of 35mm photography.
Doubling a Single Frame of Movie Film
Oskar Barnack (1879–1936) was an engineer at Ernst Leitz, an optical company in Wetzlar, Germany. He joined in 1911 as a precision mechanic and soon became head of development for cinema and measuring technology. He conceived a small camera that took the 18×24mm frame of the 35mm film then used for movies and doubled it horizontally, shooting at 24×36mm. A company record from March 1914 notes that this prototype was completed under the name “Liliput.” Today we call it the Ur-Leica.
World War I delayed production. The first production Leica I was unveiled at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair, and about 57,000 were made by 1930. The 24×36mm format we now call “full frame” began here. It is also the frame size of the 135 film we load into our film cameras.
An Award About People and Their Environment
LOBA was created in 1979, the centenary of Barnack’s birth, and has named winners since 1980. Its theme has been the same from the start. It goes to a photographer whose outstanding series captures the relationship between people and the environment they live in. The award looks at a series, not a single picture, and that shapes its character.
Today entry is by nomination, not open call. Photography experts around the world nominate photographers, and a jury chooses from among them. This year more than 130 experts nominated over 400 entries, and 12 finalists were announced in August. Since 2009 the official list of winners has also included Newcomer award winners. This year a grant for women photographers was added for the first time.
From Sebastião Salgado to Alejandro Cegarra
Going back through the official list, one familiar name from the history of documentary photography follows another. Sebastião Salgado won twice, in 1985 and 1992. Chris Steele-Perkins (1988), Eugene Richards (1993), Gianni Berengo Gardin (1995), and Larry Towell (1996) all received it too. In the 2010s, Jan Grarup (2011) and JH Engström (2015) joined the list.
Last year’s winner, Alejandro Cegarra, was a first in the award’s history. He won the Newcomer award in 2014, and 11 years later, in 2025, he won the main award with “The Two Walls.” He is the first to go from the Newcomer award to the main award. The 2024 main award went to Davide Monteleone for “Critical Minerals.”
The 2026 Winner, in the Ring Until 33
This year’s main award comes with €40,000 and €10,000 worth of Leica equipment.
Faizulin’s background is unusual for a photography prize winner. He was born in 1986 in Uzbekistan and moved to Russia with his family after the Soviet Union collapsed. Until he was 33, he made his living as a martial artist and professional wrestler. Photography came after that. He learned it in Kaliningrad, attending workshops with documentary photographer Dmitry Markov.
He first went to Dagestan as a traveler in 2020. The following year he moved there for good. He has said he sensed the region was about to change quickly, and that this was why he started the project.
Tourism, New Buildings, and What Gets Left Behind
“Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves” follows the mountain villages of Dagestan as they change. Tourists arrive in greater numbers, and new buildings go up to receive them. Meanwhile, old houses and customs are left untended. The photographs show the landscape changing, and with it, traditions and cultural identity.
Still, the series does more than condemn. Faizulin records what is changing without stripping the land of its beauty. Moments when the balance between people and landscape breaks sit side by side with moments when it still holds. That balance is what the title speaks to: preserving nature means preserving ourselves.
The Newcomer Award and the First LOBA Women Grant
The Newcomer award went to American photographer Laila AnnMarie Stevens. Her winning work, “Clayton Sisterhood Project,” is a black-and-white series about her two older sisters and four nieces and nephews, who left Queens, New York, and made a home together on a single plot of land in Clayton, North Carolina. Stevens began working for The New York Times at 20 and studied photography and media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York. She receives €10,000 and a Leica Q3.
The LOBA Women Grant, new this year, went to Italian photographer Valentina Sinis. Her ongoing project in Iraqi Kurdistan follows Kurdish women who left their homes to join the armed resistance. She receives €10,000, a Leica Q3, and professional support to help her complete the work.
The award has asked the same question since 1980. What answer came back this year? A former wrestler went to live in an unfamiliar place and watched it change up close. On the path Barnack opened with his small camera, this year’s winning work is the answer of someone who actually lived on that land.
Info
- Award Leica Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA). Since 1980, 46th edition this year · announced October 8, 2026, in Wetzlar, Germany
- Winner Damir Faizulin, “Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves” · €40,000 and Leica equipment worth €10,000
- Newcomer Laila AnnMarie Stevens, “Clayton Sisterhood Project” · €10,000 and a Leica Q3
- LOBA Women Grant Valentina Sinis · €10,000, a Leica Q3, and project support
This year’s winning series and the finalists’ work can be viewed on the official LOBA website, and the winners since 1980 in the list of past winners.
