Vanessa Winship's photography exhibition Sweet Nothings features portraits of rural schoolgirls from the borderlands of eastern Anatolia. The portraits depict their social status as well as the tenderness of their age.

"Many things touched me during the making of these images. I was touched by the gravity in their demeanour at the moment in front of the camera, their fragility, their simplicity, their grace, their closeness to one another, but most of all I was struck by their complete lack of posturing."
Vanessa Winship

Sweet Nothings won 1st Prize for Winship in the Portraits Story category of the 2008 World Press Photo contest.

Vanessa Winship was born in the UK in 1960. She studied film, video and photographic arts at Westminster University, followed by a postgradute diploma in photojournalism at the London College of Printing. She has been working as a freelance photographer since 1992, and has lived in Turkey and the Balkans since 1999. She currently lives and works between London and Istanbul and is represented by Agence Vu. Her work has been exhibited in France, Turkey, Germany, Slovenia and Greece.

The exhibition is taking place in the framework of Athens Photo Festival 2008. The central theme of the festival is the Mediterranean and it focuses on identifying the cultural, religious and environmental features of the region, and how these affect the development of a common intercultural framework of communication around the Mediterranean.

The festival includes 52 exhibitions featuring the photographs of more than 200 artists from Europe and other Mediterranean countries, as well as a range of parallel wrap-around events including two international photography conferences, a photo folio review, and a series of lectures and educational workshops.