No Man's Land

We are delighted to award the Second Prize to Simon Johansson for his project No Man’s Land.

In No Man’s Land, Simon Johansson reflects on the fragile terrain between memory and departure. The work unfolds around the closing of an old rectory in rural Öland — a place filled with decades of personal history, now emptied and left behind.

Through a sequence of quiet, observant images, Johansson traces the emotional landscape of a farewell: family gatherings, fleeting gestures, animals, interiors, and the slow rhythms of a countryside where time seems suspended. The photographs carry the weight of a life once lived there, revealing moments that feel both ordinary and quietly monumental.

As Johansson writes, «The house has been emptied of three decades of memories and the key will be handed over to the new owners.»

In these images, the past and present coexist. Rural roads, familiar faces, and silent rooms become fragments of a larger emotional geography — one shaped by love, loss, and the difficulty of leaving behind the places that formed us.

No Man’s Land is not simply about a physical departure. It is about the suspended space that follows — the uncertain territory between what was and what comes next.