Pictures
– Ambassadors of Hope
Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul presents ”UNICEF
Photo of the Year“
This year’s international photo award “UNICEF
Photo of the Year“ will go to the Danish photographer
Jan Grarup for a photo taken of refugee children from
Liberia. UNICEF awards this prize to highly artistic and
sophisticated photos on a high level which illustrate
the living conditions of children and highlight their
personalities in a particularly impressive manner. The
Federal Minister for Economic Co-operation and Development,
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, presented the award to Jan
Grarup in Hamburg. “The UNICEF photo competition
makes people aware of the fate of children in this world”,
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said during the award ceremony.
”These are painful pictures showing children suffering
from poverty. But at the same time, these pictures give
us hope because they build a bridge between rich and poor
countries. They make it evident how urgently help is needed
and how much can be done with it.” “Pictures
can interpret between cultures much better than language
can,” says Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert, TV journalist
and member of the UNICEF board of directors. “The
award-winning photos are a case in point. At the same
time, they stand for different approaches covering a wide
spectrum of contemporary photography.”
1.
Prize Jan Grarup, "Forgotten Refugees of
the World "
Photographer Jan Grarup
took this award-winning picture in June 2002 near
the border between Liberia and Sierra Leone. It
is part of a photo series on children who fled their
homeland Liberia to escape the civil war. One picture
shows them begging for border passes to get across
to a refugee camp in Sierra Leone. Through an opening
in the wall, the hands of children seem to be grasping
at a void.According to United Nations estimates,
some 200.000 people in Libereria were fleeing from
marauding soldiers who have been terrorizing the
population after the war erupted again in 2002.
Approximately 125.000 people sought refuge in neighboring
Sierra Leone. UNICEF maintained in 2002 an aid program
– also with the support of the German Federal
Government - for more than 50.000 people in four
refugee camps.
2.
Prize Wolfgang Müller, "Karat, the sky over
St. Petersburg"
"Karat" is derived from
the name of a shoe polish containing volatile solvents.
Street kids use this polish for sniffing. "Heaven
over St. Petersburg" denotes not only illusory spaces,
but also very real ones: many of these children find a
place to sleep in attics and on rooftops above the city
where they can be undisturbed taking drugs and earning
their living through prostitution. In the years 2000 and
2001 Wolfgang Müller photographed children and young
adults in St. Petersburg whose center of life is the street.
Over the course of nine months he accompanied eight different
groups or individuals. He has received important awards
for his work.
3.
Prize Stuart Freedman, "Transit Camps, Burundi
2000 "
A Hutu child carries water to
the makeshift shelter where his family is forced to live.
Hutu peasants are kept for their own safety in transit
camps guarded by Tutsi soldiers.
“Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, enough
food is available on our planet. But nevertheless people
are still dying of hunger," says the photographer.
“Politics and Hunger” is a project by Stuart
Freeman for which he already photographed in Burundi,
southern Sudan, Iraq, and Brazil.
Photographer:
Stuart Freedman, Great Britain, Network Photographers
4.
Prize für Cathia Hecker, Hanna - pictures from a child´s
life
Hanna is a ten-year old girl who was
born with Down's syndrome. The photos were first published August
2001 in the book „Hanna – Lebensbilder eines Kindes“.Hanna
lives near the city of Osnabrück together with her father
and two younger sisters. She attends a special education school
and takes part in the many recreational activities offered by
a typical community. She plays and lives with her friends and
sisters. In her innermost self, her often indomitable zest for
life and her ability to give direct expression to whatever moves
her exists a vitality surprising to many.The photographer’s
intent was to question anew the definition of disability and
normality, of being different and of conformity. She succeeded
in portraying an optimistic and positive series of views of
a German girl born with a disability.
