A selection of prize-winning photographs from the 70th annual Pictures of the Year Internationalphotojournalism contest. Judging of this year’s POYi competition commenced last week with hundreds of photographs receiving recognition across multiple categories.
Pictures of the Year International is a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. The mission of POYi is to promote and extend the reach of documentary photographers by engaging citizens with documentary photography. POYi is a non-profit, academic program dedicated to journalism education and professional development. From The Denver Post
POYi First Place – PORTRAIT (Daniel Ochoa De Olza/Associated Press) Juan Jose Padilla waits before making the traditional ‘paseillo’ or ritual entrance into the arena, in Brihuega, Spain on Saturday, April 14, 2012.
POYi First Place – SPORTS PICTURE STORY (Casper Hedberg/Freelance for Kontinent) A chapandaz who managed to drop the dead carcass in the “halal” circle can win anything from one hundred to several thousand u.s. dollars. The prize is awarded directly, and then the game starts over again.
POYi First Place – NEWS PICTURE STORY (Javier Manzano/Agence France-Presse) Two rebel soldiers stand guard in the Karmel Jabl neighborhood of Aleppo as more than a dozen holes made by bullets and shrapnel pepper the tin wall behind them. The dust from more than one hundred days of shelling, bombing and firefights hung thick in the air around them as they took turns guarding their machine-gun nests. Both sides (the Free Syria Army and the regime) rely heavily on snipers – the cat and mouse game of Aleppo’s front lines. The Karmel Jabl and Al-Arqoob neighborhoods are strategically important because of their proximity to the main road that separates several of the main battlegrounds in the city from one of the largest rebel-controlled regions in Aleppo. It is widely believed that if the regime ordered its infantry (most of it is largely composed of Sunni Muslims) to charge the rebels, a large number of the soldiers would defect to the opposition. For this reason, face-to-face combat is rare. Instead, the regime relies mostly on tanks, indirect fire (mortars and artillery), airplanes and snipers. Snipers can hold a line of several streets and can take weeks for the rebels to locate and neutralize.
POYi – WORLD UNDERSTANDING AWARD (David Chancellor/INSTITUTE) Huntress with buck, South Africa. As boundaries are declared with walls and ditches, and cement suffocates the land, the great herds of the past become concentrated in new and strange habitats. Densities rise, the habitats are diminished, and the land itself begins to die. Imbalance is compounded. Man and animal now more than ever find themselves competing for both food and space
See all of these remarkable images here on the Denver Post pblog site
Oxford School of Photography 