Romanian photographer Vadim Ghirdă, an Associated Press correspondent awarded this year with the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography, will be the special guest of this year's Photo Trends Festival in Romania. The event takes place from August 19 to 27 in the 2 Mai and Vama Veche seaside resorts.

Ghirdă will be present at the opening of his exhibition "Ukraine. The war close to us" on August 23. The photographs, printed under special conditions in an extremely large format, will be on display outdoors, in the pedestrian zone of the 2 Mai resort, and will be on show until the end of the festival.

Vadim Ghirdă is one of the most acclaimed photographers internationally. He started working with the Associated Press in 1990 when he was 18 years old. He documented in images the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Romanian photographer covered many major events, including the miners' riots in Romania, the declaration of independence of the Republic of Moldova, numerous protests in Ukraine, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the bombings in Serbia, the conflict in Bosnia, or the crisis in Kosovo.

His work won numerous prestigious awards, such as the US National Press Photographers Association award, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar prize, and multiple awards from the Associated Press or the Clarion Award, and has also been ranked several times in the annual lists of the biggest press publications.

Photo Trends Festival was born after 10 years of VSLO (Vama sub Lumini de Oscar), the biggest visual arts festival in Romania (2010-2019). Over the ten years, dozens of photo courses and seminars, exhibitions and concerts were organized, and the most talented photographers were awarded photo-video equipment and trophies specially created for the event.

Dedicated courses are held for three days during this new festival, and at the end, a winner of the "Photo Trends Festival" Grand Trophy is designated. Further details are available here.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: the organizers)