My Family

Intergenerational Peace

This year’s winner of our Children’s Award comes from the port city of Batumi on Georgia’s Black Sea coast: eleven-year-old Sesilia Shainadze. She is in Year 5 at the ‘Masterclass’ Lyceum, a state school which, as its mission statement explains, sets high standards for foreign language learning and the teaching of democratic values and environmental responsibility.

Sesilia’s mother works as an insurance agent, and her father as an offshore engineer. Sesilia has been interested in photography for years, but regrets that her own camera is currently broken. The award-winning photograph shows a scene at her grandmother’s house, where Sesilia has arranged a ‘stage set’ with her grandmother, her uncle, aunt, cousins and her dog – an idea that was entirely her own. She loves that there is always so much going on at her grandmother’s – it’s cheerful and colourful.

Peace, after all, is not merely the absence of war; it begins where families come together in warmth, love, care and happiness. For Sesilia, this is her current vision of a peaceful world.

Sesilia, who otherwise has no concrete idea yet of what her future life will be like, wants to continue taking photographs. Just as she also enjoys painting and travelling. She particularly enjoys photographing animals, especially her dog, whom she raised herself.

The jury found Sesilia’s creative drive – the way she brought her idea to life from all those random snapshots, which she had also submitted to – to be outstanding and, moreover, delightfully humorous. This included the division of household chores, with her husband actually washing the dishes.

(Laudatio by Peter-Matthias Gaede)