The “Portraying Religions in the Public Space Photo Award” is a collaborative project of the IUAES Commission on the Anthropology of Religion and the IUAES Commission on Urban Anthropology.

The award is meant as an occasion to present visual explorations of religions in the public space, across geographical and cultural contexts, through a plurality of methodological, theoretical and aesthetic perspectives. The 13 winning photos will be included in the “Portraying Religions in the Public Space” Calendar 2027, which we invite you to download from our social media and IUAES page (it will be available in printable form for free download by the end of this year).

We thanks the authors for sending us their interesting work on various religions and regions around the world, with different poetics, aesthetics, and approaches, which help us think about religions from different perspectives and have a calendar marked by rituals and festivities from various traditions.

We are grateful to the authors for their valuable contributions, and the judges Daniela Calvo, Reet Hiiemäe, Ullrich Kleinhempel, Vivek Kumar, Helmar Kurz, Tova Makhani- Belkin, Natasha Martins, Joana Roque de Pinho, Vincenzo Scamardella, and Marta Wójtowicz-Wcisło for the selection of the photos.

We also thank Vincenzo Scamardella (PhD candidate, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Ideas, Marseille, France) for his careful work for the design of the calendar.