“Claudio Silvano was a worthy winner of this year’s Hariban Award. A Brazilian national who relocated to France in 2012, his work deals with notions of displacement and belonging through images that are at once precise and open to interpretation. The title of the series he presented to the Hariban Award, Campo Aberto (“open field” in Portuguese) is apposite. In his photographs, landscapes combine to create a sense of a broader, unfathomable system. Silvano steers clear of identifiable geographic markers, leaving it up to the viewer to project their inner world onto the one he has assembled here. When human beings do appear in his images, they are isolated, as if on the verge of being swallowed up by the landscape surrounding them. I am convinced that Claudio Silvano’s collaboration with Benrido’s master craftsmen will add a further layer of complexity and mystery to this project.”

– Marc Feustel
On behalf of the Juror, Hariban Award 2016