Rewarding those who snap the best shot

PHOTOS of the winners of the Andrei Stenin International Photo Contest, organised by the Rossiya Segodnya news agency under the aegis of the Commission of the Russian Federation for Unesco, will be shown in Cape Town for the fourth time in the history of the contest.

Independent Media and African News Agency (ANA) are the media and exhibition partners for the African leg of the exhibition.

The exhibition will display dozens of photos by some of the world’s best young photographers from Russia, South Africa, Italy, the US, Germany, France, Spain and India.

It will open in the FORM photo gallery at 56 Roeland Street, Cape Town on October 10.

The exposition is full of bright images. The contest’s Grand Prix went to Italian photographer Gabriele Cecconi for the photo series The Wretched and the Earth.

This is 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 are 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 Justin Sullivan. It depicts an African elephant that was killed by poachers in Northern Botswana.

This photo became the absolute front-runner in the online voting, earning more than a quarter of all votes.

On the eve of the contest, its 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 into the contest’s short-lists 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.

SPORT: Lonely Olympics by Alexei Filippov, first place.

TOP NEWS, SINGLE: Baywatch by Basilio Sepe, second place.

GRAND PRIX WINNER: The Wretched and the Land by Gabriele Cecconi.

HERO OF OUR TIME: Tale of the Tormented by Mushfiqul Alam, first place.

MY PLANET: My Yakutia by Alexei Vasilyev, first place.