Meet the four projects nominated for the 2025 “Photography with Social Impact” Award
The 2025 edition of Pa-ta-ta Festival has now announced its four finalists for the Photography with Social Impact Award, a recognition of projects that use photography to focus on the community, addressing relevant social issues and promoting transformation through art.
Diente de leche (Milk Tooth) — Silvia Ayerra (Spain)
This personal documentary project stems from the bond between Silvia and her uncle José Antonio, a 77-year-old man with an unclassified disability. Through conversations and encounters, Silvia explores the passage of time, the human condition, lost innocence and dependency. Far from portraying José Antonio as someone with limitations, the series presents a subject with agency, personality and emotions, in a healing reflection that invites us to rethink fragility and the need for support. “Diente de leche” is a visual journey through memory, reality and the fantastical, seeking to open up a space for expression and freedom within the life circumstances each of us faces.
Las cigarreras de alicante (The Cigarette Makers of Alicante) — Lucía Morate Benito (Spain)
This collective project stems from the need to recover and reinterpret the memory of the cigarette makers of Alicante, working-class women who have been overlooked in official historical accounts for centuries. Drawing on participatory photography, this project brings to life a living memory that bridges the past and the present, reviving the legacy of solidarity, struggle and rights of these women. Inspired by the myth of Kora — which connects image and memory — Lucía’s work seeks to transform history from a critical and feminist perspective, restoring prominence to those who built a fundamental part of Alicante’s social and working identity.
Heda — Ola Skowrońska (Poland)
“Heda” is a project born out of Ola’s experiences with Chechen women, particularly a friend named Heda, and explores the complex identity of the daughters of Chechen refugees in Europe. These women live in a cultural limbo: alienated from the misogyny of their culture of origin whilst simultaneously facing xenophobia in their host countries. Unable to meet in person due to the political situation, Ola began photographing other women sharing the name Heda across various European countries. The result is a multidimensional narrative on migration, trauma, belonging and friendship, which gives voice to invisible stories with great sensitivity and depth.
Huellas (Footprints) — Luana Fischer (Brazil)
“Footprints” is a photographic essay that portrays elderly women from rural areas whilst re-signifying an historically exclusionary space: a former 16th-century Jesuit school. The project invites reflection on the invisible life stories of these women, whose memory is not found in history books but only in their bodies and their immediate surroundings. Created using the light that has illuminated the building for centuries, “Footprints” is also a political act that affirms the female presence in the collective memory and challenges the official narrative, generating an alternative and assertive narrative through photography.
These four projects form a diverse and profound mosaic, bringing photography into dialogue with pressing social issues, ranging from memory and identity to migration, dependency and life in rural areas. We’ll find out the winner during the festival in October!
