UNICEF-Photo of the Year 2017
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UNICEF-Photo of the Year 2017 First Prize 2017 Syria: The face of a tormented childhood Zahra’s face. The face of a five-year-old Syrian girl in a refugee camp in Jordan. In 2015, Zahra’s parents fled the war in Syria with her and seven other children. They have lived in a tent ever since. Her father, who used to work as a taxi driver and farmer, is looking for work on the fields of the Jordan Valley; his children have no chance of attending school. Zahra was far from the first refugee child photographer Muhammed Muheisen, born in 1981 in Jerusalem, had met. The humanitarian tragedies in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan are something the renowned photographer, who had worked many years for AP, knows all too well. But for him, Zahra’s face and her eyes, in particular, were symbolic for the fate of hundreds of thousands of girls and boys: the quiet sadness of the most innocent victims of war, displacement and exile. Having experienced an unspeakable amount of violence, these children initially have nothing else to cope with it than helplessness and disbelief. The face of a childhood lost forever. Photographer: Muhammed Muheisen, Jordan (AP/dpa) Second Prize 2017 Bangladesh: The exodus of the Rohingya Although they had lived for generations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the military junta’s 1982 Citizenship Act rendered them stateless. As a result, the Muslim Rohingya were excluded from mostly Buddhist Myanmar’s official list of 135 ethnic groups; so most of their children have no access to medical help and are not allowed to attend school. 300,000 Rohingya had already fled to neighboring Bangladesh, when the exodus of another 600,000 Rohingya began in August 2017 after Rohingya militants attacked several police posts. In the face of this humanitarian crisis, the UN spoke of “ethnic cleansing”, “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. The photojournalist K.M. Asad was born in 1983 in Dhaka and works for several international media. He captured this seemingly tranquil moment of a Rohingya refugee and her child arriving on the beach of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Thousands have crossed the border on foot or, such as the woman in the picture, by boat. With them they bring the experience of mass killings and rape. Their villages and fields: burned. Their belongings: destroyed. Their families: torn. Asad’s picture of mother and child who look like they were ascending from the sea: an image of life and limb saved. It also shows, however, a humanitarian disaster. Among its victims are approximately 320,000 children. Photographer: K.M. Asad, Bangladesh (Zuma Press) Third Prize 2017 Bangladesh: Nothing but utter despair It was on September 20, 2017 when aid transports arrived at a Rohingya refugee camp near the Bay of Bengal. Since the end of August, hundreds of thousands of people had arrived in the camp in a few days, with little more than the clothes on their backs. Photographer Kevin Frayer witnessed the moment when a weeping boy had pulled himself up onto the truck, wrapped his arms around the leg of the man standing over the food, reached out and tried to make eye contact with the man he hoped would help him. Frayer, born in 1993 in Canada, worked many years for the Associated Press in the Middle East. Today, he lives in Beijing and works for Getty Images. Although he is quite familiar with people in emergency situations, the utter despair of this boy presented a magnitude of sadness to him that shocked him more than anything else he had seen. Countless Rohingya men fell victim to the violence in Myanmar; therefore it was mostly women and children, among them thousands of unaccompanied minors, who fled to Bangladesh. They live in makeshift dwellings made from bamboo or plastic on muddy ground, rife with diseases and malnutrition, and under conditions where human lives are reduced to – literally – bare survival. Photographer: Kevin Frayer, Canada (Getty Images) Honorable Mention 2017 Russia: Peaceful coexistence “You don’t work, you’re only looking after the baby.” Originally not more than the thoughtless statement by a friend, these words encouraged Russian photographer Yuliya Skorobogatova to carry out an empowering project that filled that alleged idleness with lots of life. Titled “Mom at work”, she portrayed young women during their daily attempt to balance family and work. “Elena, cook. Married with two sons, eight and four years” is the (slightly ironic) title Skorobogatova gave one of her pictures: a reference to the men usually away at work. No doubt a professional cook can also formidably cook at home. But how do female actors, Pilates teachers, veterinarians, architects, packaging designers, etc. manage to work when they are surrounded by children? Skorobogatova, born in 1981 in Moscow, with two daughters, captured some lovingly chaotic moments of their daily lives. Her works have been published, for example, in Stern Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair. As for her professions, she explicitly states “photographer and housewife”. Photographer: Yuliya Skorobogatova, Russia (Freelance Photographer) Honorable Mention 2017 Iraq: Freed, but not free of fear Mosul, Iraq, summer of 2017. The “Islamic State” has been driven from the second largest city in Iraq – three years after they had captured it. The fighting during the months it took to recapture the city, in whose Great Mosque the leader of ISIS had declared his caliphate, has left the city in ruins. The population: turned into hostages, caught between the fronts and repeatedly prevented from fleeing the city. Then this moment: a little barefoot girl who had just arrived holding the hand of a young man stands in front of an Iraqi special forces checkpoint in Kokjali. A soldier brandishing his weapon next to this shy little girl: one of the absurd situations many of the city’s two million inhabitants had to live through, including the children. And still have to. Photographer Zohra Bensemra, born in Algiers in 1968, captured the children’s fear and vulnerability in this and other photographs. She is one of those photojournalists who go to where it must even hurt the viewer to imagine such a life: She documented the Algerian civil war, has been to Afghanistan and Somalia, Sudan and Libya. While working for Reuters, she also traveled from Mosul to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the next location in the battle to oust ISIS, to the next place where children also die. Photographer: Zohra Bensemra, Algeriea (Thomson Reuters) Honorable Mention 2017 Ivory Coast: Creating hope together In West Africa, such as here in Abidjan, the economic and cultural hub of Côte d’Ivoire, people believe that twins have mystical powers. That’s why their mothers bring them to the vicinity of the big mosque in Koumassi, a district of Abidjan, to offer the faithful a chance to get additional blessings from their twins – for a little money, of course. Photographer Anush Babajanyan, born in 1983 in Armenia, coincidentally found out about this kind of offering that combines superstition, poverty and a peculiar form of child labor. She saw dozens of twins in the streets, dressed up and posing for hours. A cute, but also sad encounter, according to the photographer who works for the agency VII and whose work was published, for example, in the New York Times, the Washington Post and National Geographic. Babajanyan’s main topic: The peace process between Turkey and her home country of Armenia, which she wants to support, for example, through a project involving young photographers from both countries. Photographer: Anush Babajanyan, Armenia (VII Agency) Honorable Mention 2017 Great Britain: On the losing side Unemployment, gang crime, teenage pregnancies, drugs, alcohol – especially in the former industrial hubs of the United Kingdom and even more in Scotland and Northern Ireland – are part of the everyday life of many young people. Several government programs helped to somewhat improve their situation, but could not relieve the majority of young people from their structural hardships and lack of perspective. Here, the unemployment rate among young people is three times higher than with the rest of the population. In specific crisis hot spots it is even eleven times higher. And latent violence is still simmering under the surface due to the persistence of (religious) segregation and separation and the continued existence of former paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Photographer Toby Binder, born in 1977 in Esslingen and a member of the agency Anzensberger, has spent many years documenting the situation of children and adolescents in the traditional working-class districts of Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Liverpool. He lives in Munich and Buenos Aires; his works – mostly social (photo) documentaries – have been published in over two dozen newspapers and magazines in Germany alone and have also won numerous awards and nominations. Photographer: Toby Binder, Germany (Freelance Photographer) Honorable Mention 2017 Germany: When dad is everything Hannah lives with her dad in a small apartment in Hanover’s district of Linden. She was only a few months old when her mother died in a car crash. The girl was not old enough to have any memories of the time before. Losing her mother thus haunts him more than her, says her father. Once in a while, however, there are those moments of melancholy and silent grief. Leona Ohsiek, born in 1995 and currently a student of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover, has documented “the ups and downs of a small family without a mother” in a sensitive and affectionate manner, simultaneously perceiving the emotional relationship of two people whose heart was taken away.