We are delighted to announce the results of TRAVEL. An Atlas of Stories, Places and Faces, the free open call dedicated to contemporary travel photography.

Conceived as a celebration of our planet’s extraordinary diversity, TRAVEL invited photographers from around the world to venture beyond borders, to let themselves be surprised by places, people and cultures, and to tell the story of travel through the lens — as experience, encounter and transformation. The response exceeded expectations: an international participation of remarkable breadth, with projects spanning continents, climates and profoundly different human conditions.

The selected works will come together in a group exhibition at Sala Veruda as part of Trieste Photo Days 2026 (22–25 October), and in a photographic volume to be presented during the festival.

Best Author

Alec Rill with the project All the Light We Cannot See – Blackouts in Cuba

Alec Rill has known Cuba for years: he first visited in 2006, witnessing the hardships of everyday life, and returned in 2017, when a loosening of economic restrictions had kindled a sense of hope. When he goes back in 2024, he finds the country in a condition he has never seen before: overnight queues of cars waiting for petrol, food so scarce that people rummage through rubbish, and above all the blackouts, no longer occasional disruptions but a structural, daily reality, arriving without warning. It is in this darkness that the New York-based photographer, shaped by a life of constant relocation, finds his vantage point: the light of mobile phones slowly dying with their batteries, car headlights turned towards groups of friends sitting outside their unlit homes. Faces laughing. People dancing. The Latin American happiness paradox — documented by researchers, yet still hard to believe until you see it — as a quiet, collective resistance to crisis. All the Light We Cannot See is a project that looks people in the face rather than pointing fingers, and finds, in that darkness, a defiance that refuses to be extinguished.

Honourable Mentions

Honourable mentions go to seven projects that engaged with the theme of travel with depth and originality:

• Massimiliano Cambuli – Stateless
• Costanza Rossi – Nomads of a Changing Horizon
• Roberto Malagoli – Travel in Dancalia
• Andrea Klausner – Fly Away With TWA
• Marco Parenti – Yukimi
• Immacolata Giordano – Fireflies – The Journey of Light
• Camilla Bettinelli – Skyward Gazes

Remarkable Rewards

• Tiziana Verbitz – Ti canto memento mori
• Julie Kerbel – Mama Africa
• Maria Grazia Castiglione – All Journeys End Here
• Shivani Tibrewal – Sea of Turmeric
• Luca Baldassari – Oltre l’Elba: Pinhole Explorations in the Tuscan Archipelago
• Pablo Fanque’s Fair – Elusive Times by the Sea

We thank all the photographers who took part in TRAVEL with their vision and dedication. The quality and variety of the projects received confirm the vitality of a travel photography that refuses to stay on the surface, and instead seeks the deeper meaning of the encounter with the other. Congratulations to all the winners, we can’t wait to see you in Trieste in October!