The ninth edition of the Xposure International Photography Festival, organized by the Media Office of the Government of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, came to an end on February 26th. Antonio Aragón, originally from Cantabria, received the award for the best portrait at the Xposure Photography Awards, while Andrés Aguilar, an Ecuadorian based in Spain, was declared the winner in the Animation category at the Xposure International Film Awards.
After seven days of intense activity, turning Sharjah, the cultural capital of the United Arab Emirates, into the epicenter of global photography with the exhibition of works by the most renowned professionals in the visual arts, Xposure 2025 closed its doors in grand fashion. It did so by inviting festival attendees to a historic talk between two icons of photojournalism, Don McCullin and James Nachtwey. On the last day of the festival, the audience had the opportunity to hear firsthand about the photography techniques of both and how they each overcame the challenging moments they had to capture in countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Kenya, and Northern Ireland, among many others.
Following in the footsteps of these great masters, Spanish photojournalist Antonio Aragón has been capturing stories that need to be told so that humanity reacts. With a photograph depicting what he calls forgotten stories, as the photographer states, «stories that no one cares about and happen in countries where the media is absent,» he won the first prize in the portrait category at the festival’s photography awards.
The photo is part of a series that the photojournalist began several years ago in West Africa, focusing on childhood and disability, in line with Oasis, the NGO he founded 25 years ago to provide reconstructive plastic surgery and traumatology to children.
The portrait, titled ‘The dancer,’ captures the attitude of Iván, an eight-year-old boy, moments before receiving the prosthetics that would change his life forever at a hospital in Ivory Coast. To capture this image, the author acknowledges that he lived with the hospitalized children for more than 20 days, initially without a camera, but later with one because, as Aragón puts it, «there comes a moment when they don’t see me anymore, and that’s when I really start taking photographs.»
With these kinds of images, the photographer states that he does not aim to change the world. «When one arrives in Africa for the first time, they are eager and believe that as the almighty white person, they will change things, and that’s not true,» Aragón comments. However, there is a hint of optimism in his words when he says, «we always have to look for a glimmer of hope within that complex reality. In Africa, everything good is small and insignificant, while everything bad is large. So we try to make that small good grow bigger and bigger.»
He confesses that for years, the publication of his reports in the media has accounted for a very small part of his earnings, noting that now documentary photography finds its place and source of income in «grants, awards, exhibitions, books, social media, all those platforms that everyone has access to initially,» he admits. «I see the future of photojournalism as spectacular because you can showcase your work to large audiences through the media I mentioned earlier, something that was practically impossible before,» Aragón adds.
In this regard, he only has praise for Xposure, where he has been participating since 2018, the year he won in the photojournalism category. «Sharjah is spectacular, the festival setup is amazing, there is nothing like this in the world. I have done many exhibitions worldwide and I have never seen my prints so beautifully displayed as here,» the photographer affirms. While acknowledging that the United Arab Emirates has the financial means to organize such a grand festival, he also points out that they are advised by «very interesting people» like Simon Newton, who holds the position of Head of Creative Content at the festival. Thus, the Cantabrian photographer states that it is «a great honor that they have chosen the photo of ‘The Dancer’ among 15,000 images.»
Equally proud is the Ecuadorian filmmaker based in Madrid, Andrés Aguilar, for winning the award in the Animation category at the Xposure International Film Awards with the short film ‘The Strange Case of the Human Cannonball.’ Aguilar believes that «it is always a joy to be selected in a festival and even more so to win, especially the first prize in our case.» On this occasion, the Xposure jury selected his film from among 834 entries from international filmmakers.
Aguilar is certain that, apart from its rich animation, the film succeeded at the festival by giving voice to the issue of migration, as the short creatively and sensitively addresses the topic. In line with the message and after presenting the film at the Goya 2025, Aguilar and the other head of the project, Beto Valencia, the director and creator of the story, decided to showcase it in Sharjah. «We understood that the distribution also has to align with the same discourse of the short film,» which is why they chose to send the film to the most remote places they could find.
FUENTE