Lee Wins BIFA Silver for 22-Year Analog Project ‘Silence’

Daniel Okafor

Korean photographer Lee won the silver prize in the analog/film category at the 2026 Budapest International Foto Awards for “Silence” (默), a winter meditation documentary made on traditional black-and-white film across 22 years.

According to BIFA’s announcement on its website, the award is Lee’s second from the competition, following a bronze in the “Book-Documentary” category in 2022. BIFA is an international photography award open to photographers around the world, so this is an international recognition rather than one restricted to Korea.

What does “Silence” contain?

Lee’s account traces the project to a collapse under extreme stress and a solitary search for inner calm. He then travelled each winter for 22 years across Korea’s islands, remote regions, seas and mountains, shooting landscapes on traditional black-and-white analog film. The announcement does not identify individual locations or specify a print sequence.

“This project reflects on and looks ahead to how traditional analog film’s pure photography will survive in the age of artificial intelligence,” Lee said. “Through work that is out of step with the times, I am learning restraint of desire, slowness and emptiness.”

That quotation gives the series its conceptual frame: film as a deliberate resistance to acceleration, rather than merely a choice of material. Still, the announcement reproduces no images and gives no judging citation, so the strength of the pictures themselves cannot be assessed from the prize account alone.

BIFA makes the winning works available in its official winners’ gallery, and the announcement links to an interview with Lee. The category gives Lee’s concern with analog practice an institutional setting, but an award label cannot establish how the series will be exhibited, published or what its images contribute to the debate over artificial intelligence.

What else has Lee photographed?

Lee works chiefly as a human documentary photographer, examining living spaces, with particular attention to evictees and traditional inns, and recording what he calls the truth about human dignity. Since 2020, he has lived in a run-down inn near Daejeon Station, photographing his neighbours’ daily lives and publishing two editions of the photo book “Inn.”

His recognition for that work includes:

• 2021: The Onbit Photography Award for his portrayal of the joys and sorrows of residents who rent rooms by the month.
• 2022: A BIFA bronze in documentary, labelled “Book-Documentary” in the announcement.
• 2025: His second QUESTION Photography Award.

The announcement supplies no title, citation or jury explanation for those awards beyond that broad link to the inn project. Elsewhere, however, it establishes a second strand in Lee’s career: he made his literary debut in 1989 in the journal “Silcheon Munhak,” and also works as a poet and novelist.

What happens after the prize?

At the inn, Lee has turned his position as resident into a form of direct support. When monthly donations of 200,000 to 300,000 won arrive, he buys daily necessities and delivers them to people who do not receive welfare benefits and to people with disabilities living in the monthly rooms.

No government programme or named fund is described; donations and Lee’s own work are the stated mechanism. The announcement does not say whether the monthly total arrives reliably, leaving the continuity of that support unstated.

Alongside that support, he is working on a third documentary photo book about the inn. “I have long compared photography to ‘a tree that grows by feeding on time.’ ‘Silence’ will be ‘one tall tree of time’ for me,” he said.

The comparison brings the 22-year winter project into the same ethical field as the monthly rooms, but the announcement never explains, image by image, how the black-and-white landscapes relate to the residents and their joys and sorrows recorded in “Inn.”

That gap matters because “Silence” and the third book could strengthen one another, yet the source offers no evidence of a joint publication or exhibition. For now, the firmest institutional marker is the 2026 silver prize and the BIFA winners’ gallery. The next developments to watch are concrete: completion of the third inn book, continued volunteer support for residents, and any future presentation that brings “Silence” into dialogue with “Inn.” The announcement does not announce a joint presentation, leaving that connection open rather than settled.