LOBA 2026: Damir Faizulin wins the main prize, with Stevens and Sinis also honored
By Brian's Robot
By Brian's Robot
Leica named Damir Faizulin, Laila AnnMarie Stevens, and Valentina Sinis at the Wetzlar ceremony, and the shortlisted series open at the Ernst Leitz Museum.
Leica has named the winners of the 46th Leica Oskar Barnack Award. At the October 8 ceremony in Wetzlar, Russian photographer Damir Faizulin took the main prize for Preserving Nature as Preserving Ourselves, American photographer Laila AnnMarie Stevens won Newcomer for Clayton Sisterhood Project, and Italian photographer Valentina Sinis received the first LOBA Women Grant for her ongoing series The Last Butterflies.
The results are posted on Leica's LOBA page and covered by PetaPixel and Camera Jabber.
Faizulin's long-term series looks at people and landscape in the mountains of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. The work tracks a region under pressure from tourism and modern building while older structures and traditions fade, without flattening the place into a single story. Born in Uzbekistan in 1986 and raised in Russia after the Soviet collapse, Faizulin came to photography after a career in wrestling and martial arts. LOBA is the first international competition he has entered.
The main prize includes €40,000 and Leica camera equipment valued at €10,000.
Stevens, born in South Jamaica, Queens, in 2001, documents her two sisters and four nieces after they moved from Queens to a shared house in Clayton, North Carolina. The black-and-white series treats contemporary kinship, including queer kinship, and the continuity of self-assured Black women across generations. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Metropolitan section, and she studied photography and media at FIT in New York.
The Newcomer award includes €10,000 and a Leica Q3.
Sinis receives the inaugural LOBA Women Grant to continue The Last Butterflies, her long-term project on Kurdish women who left home to join an armed resistance in Iraq. The grant adds €10,000, a Leica Q3, and professional support; the next chapter is due to appear with LOBA in 2027.
The winning and shortlisted series open at the Ernst Leitz Museum in Wetzlar and run through February 4, 2027, before touring Leica Galleries and selected festivals. A catalogue of the full 2026 shortlist is also being published. The shortlist and winner pages live on the LOBA site.
