New Delhi, Winning entries of 2018 Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest opened for public viewing on Friday at an exhibition here organised by the Russian embassy and Russian news agency Sputnik News.
Including the winning photographs of two Indian photojournalists, the exhibition of 71 entries from Russia, Iran, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Iraq, Israel, Bangladesh, Turkey and Belarus, among others, is being held in Delhi for the first time.
The annual contest is Russia’s only platform for discovering young photojournalists, and is named after late Russian military photojournalist Andrei Stenin, who died on assignment in Ukraine in 2014, when he was only 34.
The Indian photojournalists, Amit Moulik (Kolkata) and Ajay Kumar (Lucknow), are both Times of India photojournalists, and they won third place in Sports and Top News categories, respectively.
They were invited to Moscow for the award ceremony where Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev felicitated the winners with awards.
Moulik, who won it for his unpublished photograph of a street wrestling competition during the Diwali festival in Kolkata’s wholesale market Burrabazar, told IANS that photojournalism keeps him grounded to the everyday life.
“In any other profession, you will only do photography on the weekend, which was not enough for me, so I took up photojournalism,” Moulik, who has covered elections, strifes, conflicts, important public figures as well as stories of everyday life, added.
Citing a similar reason, Kumar said that photojournalism allows him to have a sense of adventure while meeting new people and capturing unusual photographs that tell a story without a caption.
His photograph captured a policeman aiming at a stray leopard in Lucknow moments before he shot dead the wild animal. The still shows the leopard growling at the policeman, who is aiming a gun at him.
The photograph is captioned “I could hear the leopard crying in pain after it was shot.” Kumar, who admits to being scared in the moment, captured it feets away from the leopard. The photograph was published in all editions of the national daily.
In the exhibition, each photograph has a story to tell. Examples of brilliant visual journalism, the stills are frozen frames of action as it happened.
The two-gallery exhibition was inaugurated by Anatoly Kargapolov, Charge d’Affairs of Russia in India, along with several noted names from the media and arts. It will run till February 28 at the AIFACS gallery here.
The 2019 edition of the Photo Contest is accepting entries from photojournalists aged between 18 and 33, till February 28. Details can be found on stenincontest.com. In 2018, over 6,000 entries from 77 countries were submitted to the contest.
The categories are Sports, Top News, Portrait, My Planet and a new addition from 2019: Inspiration.
The exhibition has travelled to Athens, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Istanbul, Shanghai, Warsaw, Mexico, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Beirut and Budapest.