Work of top photographers on display
Images from Stenin contest go on display
STUNNING images from the Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest organised by the Rossiya Segodnya news agency under the Commission of the Russian Federation for Unesco will be shown in Cape Town from today.
The exhibition displays dozens of photos by the world’s best young photographers from South Africa, Russia, Italy, the US, Germany, France, Spain and India in the Form photo gallery at 56 Roeland Street in the city centre.
The contest is an annual competition for young photojournalists aged between 18 and 33 and was named after Rossiya Segodnya photojournalist Andrei Stenin, who was killed while working in south-eastern Ukraine.
The contest’s Grand Prix accolade went to Italian photographer Gabriele Cecconi for the photo series, The Wretched and the Earth, a tragic story about the forced confrontation between people and nature. Its main characters are the Rohingya people who were forced to migrate, and the southern areas of Bangladesh that were put on the brink of slow destruction by the migration.
A photo by Francis Rousseau, The Women of Arugam Bay, shows residents of Sri Lanka who decided to master surfing.
In the series Nostalgia on the Verge of Extinction, Indian photojournalist Santanu Dey brilliantly portrays features of professions that have become or are becoming extinct in Kolkata, from Bahurupi actors to street glass cutters.
One of the most striking photos that won the first prize in the My Planet category was by local Justin Sullivan. It depicts an African elephant killed by poachers in northern Botswana.
The photo became the front runner in the online voting, earning more than a quarter of all votes.
Curator Oksana Oleinik said: “This year the Andrei Stenin contest is marking its fifth anniversary. We are glad that during this time the exhibition in Cape Town has become traditional for us. Since 2016 South Africa’s photojournalists have invariably made it on to the contest’s shortlists and have shared their emotional impressions with the rest of the world. This is the main thing for us.”
The exhibition is open from 9am to 4pm on weekdays until October 24.