Global Peace Photo Award 2022 lauds Indian photographer Sourav Das for the ‘Peace Image of the Year’ - photos from the event and further winners presented by Edition Lammerhuber
On 14 November, 2022, the winners of the international Global Peace Photo Award competition were awarded the Alfred Fried Peace Medal at the Austrian Parliament for the tenth time. The main prize Peace Image of the Year 2022 of 10,000 euros went to the Indian photographer Sourav Das with an image from his reportage on how, during the worldwide Corona-related education emergency, the initiative of the Indian teacher Deepnarayan Nayak turned the walls of the houses in his village into school blackboards. The best peace image in the children’s and youth category, ‘Children’s Peace Image of the Year’ 2022, worth 1000 euros, was won by 10-year-old Zoya Yeadon from Mauritius.
In his welcoming speech, Wolfgang Sobotka, President of the Austrian National Council, emphasized the extraordinary cooperation with the Global Peace Photo Award and how important it is to provide a forum for peace in these times. In the future, this commitment will be even more noticeable in the Austrian Parliament. The pictures of the award winners will each be shown in the auditorium for one year. This is the room where mainly press conferences will take place.
Winners of Global Peace Photo Awards 2022:
Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen from Venezuela for ‘Sinfonía desordenada – A wild Symphony’
Artem Humilevskiy from Ukraine for ‘Giant. Riese.’
Mary Gelman from Russia for: ‘Minya and Tatjana’
Maryam Firuzi from Iran for ‘The scattered memories of distorted future’
Sourav Das from India for ‘A Small Yet Great Victory Over the Pandemic’
Peace Image of the Year 2022
For millions of girls and boys, Covid meant no schooling of any kind for months. And for countless other children, this is still, or again, true. It has become sadly clear: Covid has created an educational emergency across the world, which goes beyond the loss of learning the times table. In many poorer countries, closing the schools also means that children forego their only certain meal of the day. But there were and still are wonderful exceptions. Like the initiative of Indian teacher Deepnarayan Nayak, who simply moved the school in his village outdoors. He turned the walls of the houses into blackboards. Indian photographer Sourav Das captured everyday scenes of this unusually creative and lovable village school. He has created a small monument to this peaceful action. It realizes, on the lowest conceivable level, one of the 54 articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: the right of access to education.
Sourav Das, born in 1987, calls his camera an instrument of learning. He refers to famous Henri Cartier-Bresson when he says: With one eye, you look at the world, with the other into yourself. In 2011 Das obtained a Master of Arts, then focused on photography. He sees himself as a street photographer, he wants to document social change in his society. He trusts photography to be as expressive as a novella, a song or a painting.
The Children’s Peace Image of the Year 2022
Her photo ‘Dreaming in the Peaceful Sea’ – seemingly weightless floating amid dancing light reflections and a deep blue. Zoya Yeadon is a good swimmer. But that is the most unspectacular thing you can say about her. Born in Mauritius, she really is, as her father says, ‘a nomad at heart’. Curious about the world. She has spent the last five years in a mobile home in which she has traveled through more than 80 countries. She is being taught within a program of Wolsey Hall Oxford, a home-schooling college founded in 1894.
The award was presented by Elisabeth Stadler, General Manager and Chairwoman of the Managing Board of Vienna Insurance Group (VIG).
Lois Lammerhuber, who initiated the Global Peace Photo Award together with his wife Silvia Lammerhuber and has organized it since the beginning, reminds us that: “Peace is not the absence of war, but something I would like to call ‘successful living’. Every year, the photos and stories submitted touch us once more with their creativity and passion for what is good and peaceful in this world.”
Invited by Barbara Trionfi, outgoing Director of the International Press Institute (IPI), Joanna Krawcyk, President of the Gazeta Wyborcza Foundation, Chairwoman of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance and ‘Golden Pen of Press Freedom’ awardee, made a plea for the value of photography in the perception of the world: “What we are clearly witnessing now is an intensification of visual culture, photography has become extremely important as a vehicle of change and a means of protest. Describing the world with images in a pluralistic media environment can only work in societies guided by freedom of information and expression. That is a core element of any functioning democracy – freedom of the media, and I see it as essential to the protection of human rights.”
Ten Years of Global Peace Photo Award
Peter-Matthias Gaede, Editor-in-Chief of GEO magazine 1994 – 2014, paid tribute to the 10th anniversary of the Global Peace Photo Award: “In the ten years of its existence, the Global Peace Photography Award has grown in size in almost every field.
The jury has become a large orchestra. 29 women and men from nine nations now belong to it – from six European countries, but also from Latin America, China and the US. The submissions of about 15,000 photos each year come from around 120 countries. Only apparently attracted by a compelling idea, the annual awards have become a summit of globally recognized advocates of peace and human rights.”
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates
The evening’s keynote address was given by Alexander Cherkasov, representing the Memorial Human Rights Centre together with the Center of Civil Liberties from Ukraine and Belarusian dissident and human rights activist Ales Bjalyazki. “Indeed, Memorial has spent many years trying to do something similar to the laureates at today’s ceremony: to record the past, the totalitarian past of Russia and Europe in the twentieth century, the century of totalitarian empires, to prevent it from happening again. Never again.
What kind of memory is needed for this? What was worth preserving to prevent a repeat? The memory of the victims, of course. And another memory – the experience of living in dignity under unimaginable circumstances. The memory of resistance. And also: to remember, of course, is to fight. Fighting against the impunity of criminals. (…) So the Human Rights Centre dealt with contemporary human rights violations in the post-Soviet wars. We documented, we helped, we demanded justice. (…) A life in search of meaning. The enlightenment of hearts. I think this is the right way. That is exactly what you are doing too. Through the magic of photography, through the magic of light, you stop the moment. With a flash of light, you illuminate people’s souls. I would like to think that we are pursuing a common cause.”
About the Global Peace Photo Award 2022
14,157 images from 115 countries were submitted for the Global Peace Photo Award 2022. Most of the submissions came from China, Russia, India, the USA and Iran. The submissions were judged by a distinguished international jury: www.friedaward.com/jury
Besides the Peace Image of the Year 2022 awarded to Sourav, Alfred Fried Peace Medals also went in 2022 to: Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen, Artem Humilevski, Mary Gelman, and Maryam Firuzi.
The Global Peace Photo Award is organized by Edition Lammerhuber and Photographische Gesellschaft (PHG) in partnership with UNESCO, Austrian Parliament, Austrian Parliamentary Reporting Association, International Press Institute (IPI), German Youth Photography Award, World Press Photo Foundation, POY LATAM, LensCulture, and Vienna Insurance Group.
The prize was inspired by the Austrian pacifist and writer Alfred Hermann Fried (* 11 November 1864 in Vienna; † 4 May 1921 in Vienna). Fried was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911 together with the organizer of the Hague Conference on Private International Law Tobias Asser.
GoSee www.friedaward.com
-
Like
- Comment
ADVERTISING, PEOPLE, PORTRAIT, TRANSPORTATION, HAIR, MAKEUP, STILLS …. THE ACCOUNTS WITH
A BLUE STAR ARE APPROVED BY GOSEE
