Inspiring lectures. High quality exhibitions. A friendly and informal atmosphere. This was the Lumix Festival for young photojournalism, which I attended this weekend in June in Hannover. The festival was running for the first time, but this didn't show. Everything was well organized and with around 12.000 visitors during the five days the festival has already established itself and will hopefully run again in two years.
Apart from enjoying the exhibitions and lectures, I gave a lecture to the German students of photojournalism at The University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover. I was telling about studying photojournalism in Denmark and showing work from our students.
Talking about the students from Denmark: 9 among the 60 exhibitions at the festival were made by Danish photographers who are studying or have studied at The Danish School of Media and Journalism.
Nevertheless neither of the Danish photographers won the FreeLens award which was selected between the 60 exhibitions at the festival. The winner was Stephanie Sinclair with her project on child marriages around the world. And the jury, which I was a part of, also gave honorable mention to Krisanne Johnson and Christoph Bangert.

Some of the Danes at the festival, Thomas Lekfeldt, Nanna Kreutzmann and Didde Elnif, taking a rest after seeing some of the 1300 exhibited pictures. Picture: Sřren Pagter.