A photograph that captured a 21-year-old manual scavenger at work during day break in Raj Nagar near Delhi fetched Tashi Tobgyal the award for the ‘Photo of the Year’ at the first edition of The Hindu Photojournalism Awards that were presented on Saturday.
The photograph that was published in the Indian Express, and the work of 11 other photojournalists were recognised at the event held in association with the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB). Mr. Tobgyal received a cash award of ₹1.5 lakh.
In the news category, the first prize went to Indranil Mukherjee for his photograph ‘Staring at death’ that captured Rohingyas from Myanmar crossing into Bangladesh at Cox’s Bazaar. Shot for the AFP, Mr. Mukherjee received a cash award of ₹1 lakh for the photograph. Praveen Khanna won the second place in the news category for his photograph titled ‘Pollution’, while Rajanish Kakade came third for his work, ‘High Tide’.
The award-winning photograph by Tashi Tobgyal, which shows a 21-year-old manual scavenger at work during day break in Raj Nagar, near Delhi.
Facing the tiger
A photo essay on the human-tiger conflict fetched the first prize of a cash award of ₹1.5 lakh for Senthil Kumaran. The photo essay that was published in National Geographic, Caravan and Better Photography magazines, has a series of photographs documenting the man-animal conflict. The second place in the category went to Showkat Nanda for his photo essay titled ‘The Endless Wait’ and Raj Lalwani came third for his photo essay on ‘Difficult Love’.
Arun Sreedhar received a cash award of ₹1 lakh for his award-winning entry in the sports category. His photograph, ‘Signature to the sands of time’ captured a long jumper during the National School Meet held in Gujarat and was published in the Malayala Manorama.
The category saw the entries of Jayesh P (Mudball Second) and Kunal Patil (Slick Trick) win the second and third places respectively.
A portrait of an acid attack survivor by Amarjeet Kumar Singh bagged the first prize in the portrait category and a cash award of ₹1 lakh. Smita Sharma won the second and third places for her entries, ‘They said we are the slaves’ and ‘Left Behind’.
On instituting the awards, Mukund Padmanabhan, Editor, The Hindu, said, “While we have a plethora of media awards, there is no exclusive awards for photo journalism. As a newspaper, we deal with photographs everyday. This is something integral to what we do. We thought we should recognise and celebrate photography.” A good news photograph is always about capturing that decisive moment, he added.
Among others, Varun Gupta, founder of CPB Foundation, spoke.
The images were judged in a two-step process. The first jury comprised Amirtharaj Stephen, Chirodeep Chaudhuri and Srinivas Kuruganti. The final jury members were Ashima Narain, Prashant Panjiar and Tanvi Mishra from India, Dimitri Beck from France and Yumi Goto from Japan.
The event is powered by Casagrand and Oppo Mobile. The associate sponsors are VIT University and RAU’s IAS Study Circle. KitKarma is the gear sharing partner and the event manager is IAds and Events.