‘Peace Image of the Year’ – Awards for Iranian photographer Sasan Moayyedi at the Global Peace Photo Award 2020, powered by EDITION LAMMERHUBER
With a delay of almost a year due to Covid-19, the winners of the international photo competition ‘Global Peace Photo Award’ were honored for the eighth time on the evening of 19 July, 2021, in the Austrian Parliament. The main prize ‘Peace Image of the Year 2020’ with a value of € 10,000 went to Iranian photographer Sasan Moayyedi, who lives in Tehran, for a photo from his reportage entitled ‘Love Story’ on the remarkable fate of Salah Saeedpour.
As a fifteen-year-old, Salah Saeedpour stepped on a landmine during a family picnic in the Iranian-Kurdish province of Marivan near the border to Iraq and lost both hands and both eyes. He physically became a cripple. According to the numbers with which such a condition is measured, he has been 70 percent disabled ever since. But he hasn’t given up. He continued to exercise his mutilated body, without being able to see the slightest bit of the world around him, until he started winning medals in swimming. That’s when he met the love of his life, a young Kurdish woman named Sarveh Amini he married in 2014. Four months following the wedding, Iranian photo journalist Sasan Moayyedi started to document the life of the couple, and has done so to this day.
The international jury described Moayyedi’s reportage ‘Love Story’ as “the story of a private peace that has the power to triumph over war.”
Fourteen-year-old Anastasiya Bolshakova from Russia won the prize for the best Children’s Peace Image of the Year. The prize, worth 1000 euros, is sponsored by the Vienna Insurance Group and was awarded for an image of her series ‘Flight of Soul’ – “a photograph of a peaceful childhood in a peaceful landscape. A little bit dreamy, very light, very airy. Carried by the feeling of being able to fly safely between heaven and earth.”
The Global Peace Photo Award 2020 received a stunning total of 19,711 images from 118 countries. Most entries came from Russia, China, India, Germany, and Iran. The submitted images were judged by a top-notch international jury comprising photographers, publishers and representatives from photography associations, from the World Press Photo Awards, the German Youth Photography Award, and UNESCO.
The award was inspired by Alfred Hermann Fried (* 11 November 1864, Vienna; † 4 May 1921, Vienna), an Austrian pacifist and author. Fried received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911, together with Tobias Asser, organizer of the first International The Hague Peace Conference and instigator of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The Global Peace Photo Award is organized by Edition Lammerhuber in partnership with Photographische Gesellschaft (PHG), UNESCO, the Austrian Parliament, the Austrian Parliamentary Reporting Association, the International Press Institute (IPI), the German Youth Photography Award, and the World Press Photo Foundation.
The Awards Ceremony - In his welcoming speech, Wolfgang Sobotka, President of the Austrian National Council, said he considered himself fortunate that the Global Peace Photo Award was presented in the rooms of the Austrian Parliament – which this time, however, were transformed into a stage in the Kurpark of Baden near Vienna as an alternative venue for the two hours of the award ceremony, integrated into the programme of the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival, where the award-winning pictures are exhibited and can thus be seen by around 300,000 visitors until 17 October.
Sobotka continues : “Photography, as a very special art medium, has the mission to lead us forward and to awaken our sensibilities. What these images give us tonight as takeaway is what we call contemplation. This is what our republic needs, this is what the world as a whole needs, and this is what every single person needs. Because everyone struggles to live in peace for themselves, for their family, for their surroundings, and to be the best version of themselves. Photography knows how to capture these moments and present them to us instantaneously. And for that I am also personally grateful.”
Lois Lammerhuber, who initiated the Global Peace Photo Award together with his wife Silvia Lammerhuber, reminded the audience that “peace is not the absence of war, but something I would like to call a successful life.”
Invited by Barbara Trionfi, Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), Márton Gergely, Editor-in-Chief of the Hungarian weekly HVG, said in a moving speech: “We are working in a time when the powerful decry disagreeable media as fake news and declare journalists the enemy. They accuse media professionals of being political actors who spread lies in the service of ideology. They do this because they know: Real journalists can only respond to their provocation in a very limited way. Journalists are committed to the truth. Unfortunately, the powerful of this world are not.”
The last award ceremony took place in September 2019. Since then, 91 journalists and photojournalists have been killed around the world. Danish Siddiqui was head of photography for Reuters in India. He died four days ago in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. One day earlier, we lost Peter de Vries. He was gunned down – in the middle of Amsterdam, the killers fired at him. Only days before, Alexander Lashkarava died of his injuries. He was beaten up by right-wing thugs when he wanted to report from an anti-LGBTQ march.
This year’s chairman of the 25-member jury, Pascal Maitre from France, who could not attend, was represented by Lars Boering, director of the European Journalism Center in Maastricht. “It’s easy to capture an image, but to tell a story through an image is much more difficult and especially telling a story through a series of photos. What we are trying to find as a jury is about something – about peace! I am happy to do so as a jury member. I think it is a wonderful initiative because I can certainly say that the photos that we awarded are about something.”
The statement of the jury members from eight nations for the total of six awards was formulated by long-standing GEO Editor-in-Chief Peter-Matthias Gaede from Hamburg.
David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme, which was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, gave a blazing speech. He said he was convinced that it was possible to end world hunger, but that only peace could pave the way: “Hunger is increasing around the globe, and the main cause remains conflict. Conflict creates hunger, and hunger in turn fuels conflict. It is a vicious circle that is reinforced by climate change and the pandemic, and we must break it! The winning pictures are a reminder that love and compassion can heal the wounds of war and give hope. I have hope for a better future, and that drives me and my dedicated WFP colleagues working on the frontlines of the fight against hunger. Humanity is healthier, richer and more educated than ever before. Over the last 200 years, sustainable economic growth and development have lifted billions of people out of poverty. If we all stand together, from individual donors to governments and billionaires flying into space, we can end hunger in this world. Thank God for photographers who are allowing us to break through the fog so that we can see reality. Because when we see the truth, hearts are moved and people respond.” GoSee : friedaward.com
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