PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD HIPA Concludes Judging for its Eighth Season of Competition

The Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) has concluded judging for its eighth season of competition, ‘Hope’. The nine judges presided over submissions in the competition’s four main categories; ‘Hope’, ‘General’, ‘Portfolio’ and ‘Aerial Photography: Video’. Submissions for HIPA’s eighth season of competition had closed at 31st of October 2018 (UAE Standard).

The Secretary General of HIPA, His Excellency Ali bin Thalith said, “Every year HIPA’s Board of Trustees put great effort and consideration into selecting the judging panel, ensuring they collectively possess the credentials and experience to preside over the competition. Judges are carefully selected to reflect the season’s categories and subject matter. Each judge is an expert in their field and is highly respected by their peers as well as the international photography community. I would like to thank the judges for their dedication and we look forward to celebrating the winners of HIPA’s eighth season, ‘Hope’, at our annual award ceremony next year.”

The Secretary General of HIPA, His Excellency Ali bin Thalith / Courtesy of HIPA

HIPA Eighth Season Judges

Kira Pollack - United States of America

Kira Pollack / Courtesy of HIPA

Kira Pollack is an award-winning photo director, film director and executive producer with more than 20 years of experience in visual journalism. As the Director of Photography and Visual enterprise at TIME, Kira has conceived and executed the most innovative projects in Time Inc.'s recent history, including the Emmy award-winning Beyond 9/11 multimedia project, the Emmy-winning A Year in Space video series, FIRSTS, and TIME's 100 Most Influential Photos project.

Since joining TIME in 2010, she has overseen all photography for the brand — from the cover of the weekly magazine to the TIME Instagram feed. She conceived and launched the website Lightbox, a canvas for photography and visual innovation at Time.com, and the documentary film unit Red Border Films.

A creative and imaginative storyteller, Kira has won two news and documentary Emmy awards, the Lucie award for Photo Editor of the Year, World Press Photo of the Year, two National Magazine Awards, two Webby Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, an honour from the White House National Press Association, and numerous awards from Art Directors Club, the Society of Publication Designers, American Photography and Photo District News. Her work has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy nominee and twice was a finalist in the International Documentary Festival, Amsterdam.

She has served on the prestigious juries of World Press Photo, Overseas Press Club, IDFA Doclab, the Tribeca Film Festival, Instagram/Getty Grant, and the W. Eugene Smith Grant, among others.

Ihiro Hayami - Japan

Ihiro Hayami / Courtesy of HIPA

Ihiro Hayami is the founder of T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL (Tokyo International Photography Festival). He’s the former chief editor of Japanese Photography Magazine, ‘PHaT PHOTO’ (2012-2014), and was the gallery director of RINGCUBE (Ginza). His selected curatorial exhibitions include, Alejandro Chaskielberg’s ‘Otsuchi Future Memories’ (2016), Alex Prager’s ‘WEEK-END’ (2010).

Over the past few years, he has served as juror, lecturer, and reviewer at various international photo festivals and photography universities.

Sebastián Liste - Spain

Sebastián Liste / Courtesy of HIPA

Sebastián Liste (Spain, 1985) is a documentary photographer and sociologist immersed and devoted to document the profound cultural changes and contemporary issues in Latin America and the Mediterranean Sea area, regions where he grew up and knows well. Currently he divides his time between Brazil and Spain. He is a specialist in long-term, in-depth projects where he creates frameworks to make the societies reflect about the social consequences of today´s decision makers. With his visual communication projects he wants to generate dialogues and collaborations between its subjects and the participating audiences, confronting different world´s perspectives and evaluating our impact in the future generations.

In 2010, while he was getting his Master’s degree in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, he won the Ian Parry Scholarship for his long term project ‘Urban Quilombo’, about the extreme living conditions that dozens of families who have set up home in an abandoned chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil face. The same year he was named the young editorial photographer of the year at the Lucie Awards in New York. Since then his work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, GEO, Paris Match, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Sunday Times Magazine, Burn, The British Journal of Photography, among other publications.

In 2011 Sebastián was selected to participate in the 18th World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam. Next year, Sebastián was announced as the Young Reporter of the Year winning the City of Perpignan Rémi Ochlik Award at Visa pour l´Image. The same year he won the Community Awareness Award at Pictures of the Year International competition, was named one of the 30 photographers to watch at PDN 30 and received a citation at the Olivier Rebbot Award. He also got the Emergentes DST Award at Encontros da Imagem Festival in Portugal and an honourable mention at Freelens Festival for Young Photojournalism in Germany. In addition he received a Magnum Emergency Fund Grant and the Getty Editorial Grant to develop his new project in the Brazilian Amazon. In 2013, he received a Fotopres grant in Spain to develop a new project in Venezuela which resulted in his work “On the inside: Venezuelan prisons under inmate control”. This project was exhibited at Visa pour l´Image in 2014 and at Caixa Forum in Madrid and Barcelona. That year he was also finalist at the Eugene Smith Grant and got the Emaho Award at Format Festival in UK. In 2014, he got the Alexia Foundation Grant to continue developing his ongoing project about crime, punishment and security in Latin America. In 2016 he was awarded 3rd prize in the Daily Life category of World Press Photo for his story ‘Citizen Journalism in Brazil’s Favelas‘ and got the Stern Grant to produce an story on the Self-Defenses militias in Mexico.

In 2018, he got the Nikon Special Project Grant and a grant from the European Union on environment deviation and climate change. His work is held in the permanent collection of The Sorigue Foundation in Lerida, Spain, at Maison de l´Image Documentarie in Séte, France, at Elton John Photography Collection, as well as other private collections. Sebastián Liste is a frequent lecturer on photography at universities, photography schools and festivals and conducts photographic workshops. He is currently based between Brazil and Spain.

Sebastián is Nikon European Ambassador and member of NOOR Images.

Ramzi Haidar - Lebanon

Ramzi Haidar / Courtesy of HIPA

President and founder of ‘Zakira – the Image Festival Association’ which has taught 500 children in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon basic photography and published a book of their work. Founder of Dar Al Mussawir which is a photography space in Beirut that holds photography school, exhibitions, seminars and photography related events and activities.

His professional experience includes working for United International Press (1981-83), Reuters (1983-85), Gamma, Collectif (1985-88), AgenceFrance-Presse (1988 - 2010) and many more. His works covered the Lebanese civil war including the 1982 Israeli invasion, the war in Chad in 1983, the 1985 war in Yemen, the Gulf War of 1990, Sudanese refugees in 1995, the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1991, Israeli air offensives in 1993 and 1996, Pope John Paul II’s visit to Lebanon in1997, air strike campaigns against Iraq in 1998, Israel’s May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Israel’s war on Lebanon in July 2006 as well as numerous others regional summits, events and conferences. He has also covered many athletic events including the qualifying games for the World Soccer Cup in the United Arab Emirates in 1996 and the 2000 Asian Cup for Football in Lebanon.

He is the winner of several international awards including the War Correspondents Award, the Best Picture of the Year Award from Newsweek and the Canon Best Picture Award of the Year from the University of Missouri in the United States.

Alejandro Kirchuk - Argentina

Alejandro Kirchuk / Courtesy of HIPA

Argentine photographer and video journalist Alejandro Kirchuk was born in 1987 in Buenos Aires and works as a freelancer on a range of commissions and personal projects. His work is mainly focused on personal documentary long-term projects in Argentina and South America.

With his work about Alzheimer's disease, in 2012 he received a 1st prize in 'Daily Life Stories' category in the World Press Photo contest. In 2017, he was selected participant for the Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo. Also in 2017, he received a Fulbright Grant to complete an education program on virtual reality and documentary filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. His work has been also recognized by different organizations such as POYi, NPPA, Magnum Expression Award, Ian Parry Scholarship, Terry O'Neill Award, PhotoEspaña, Lumix FotoFestival, among others. He’s been a fellow of the National Funds for Arts in Argentina (FNA).

Kirchuk is a contributing photographer to publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

Donna Ferrato - United States of America

Donna Ferrato / Courtesy of HIPA

Donna Ferrato is an internationally-known documentary photographer. Her gifts for exploration, illumination, and documentation coupled with a commitment to revealing the darker sides of humanity, have made her a giant in the medium.

Ferrato first received critical acclaim for her work that captured the horrors of family violence. Her photographs of domestic violence and its aftermath have become landmark essays in the field of documentary photography, challenging social attitudes and putting a spotlight on the devastating impact of everyday violence. Her iconic book, ‘Living with the Enemy’, published by Aperture in 1991, is considered the first clear visual journey into the dark heart of domestic abuse.

Ferrato has received numerous awards, including the W. Eugene Smith Grant (1986), the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Humanistic Photography (1987), the Kodak Crystal Eagle for Courage in Journalism (1997), International Women in Media Courage in Journalism Award (1996), the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the School of Journalism at University of Missouri-Columbia (2003) and Artist of the Year at the Tribeca Film Festival (2008).

In the spring of 2019, Powerhouse Books will publish Donna’s handmaid diary: HOLY.

Brooke Shaden - United States of America

Brooke Shaden / Courtesy of HIPA

Brooke explores the darkness and light in people, and her work looks at that juxtaposition. As a self-portrait artist, she photographs herself and becomes the characters of dreams inspired by a childhood of intense imagination and fear. Being the creator and the actor, Brooke controls her darkness and confronts those fears.

After studying films for years in college, she realized her love of storytelling was universal. She started photography then in 2008, excited to create in solitude and take on character roles herself. Brooke works from a place of theme, often gravitating toward death and rebirth or beauty and decay. Ultimately, her process is more discovery than creation. She follows her curiosity into the unknown to see whom her characters might become. Brooke believes the greatest gift an artist has is the ability to channel fears, hopes and experience into a representation of one's potential.

While her images come from a personal place of exploration, the goal in creating is not only to satisfy herself; her greatest wish is to show others a part of themselves. Art is a mirror for the creator and the observer. Brooke's passion is storytelling, and her life is engulfed in it. From creating self-portraits and writing to international adventures and motivational speeches, she wants to live a thousand lives in one. She keeps her curiosity burning to live a truly interesting story.

Myriam Meloni - Italy

Myriam Meloni / Courtesy of HIPA

Myriam Meloni is a French-Italian photographer and video maker, currently based in Spain. Originally trained as a lawyer at the University of Bologna, and specialized in criminology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, she gave a new direction to her career to dedicate herself to documentary photography. ‫. A contributing photographer to publications such The New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and Le Monde, Meloni also engages with personal long term projects with a very intimate approach, using everyday life of our society to discuss more general’s socials issues.

Her photographic series “Different shades of Blue” on Sub-Saharian migrants has been turned into a documentary film produced by the Italian TV channel SKY Arte‫. She was nominated for the Prix Pictet, winner for two consecutive years of the Sony award, and granted with a Firecracker prize for women photographers. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she is currently completing a one-year book assignment for the City Council of Barcelona, and working on her new project focused on the city of Tangier, in Morocco.

Poulomi Basu - India

Poulomi Basu / Courtesy of HIPA

Poulomi Basu is a storyteller, artist and activist. Her name sounds like ‘follow me’ with a ‘P’. She was raised by her mother in Calcutta, India and found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home as soon as her studies were complete so that she may follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.

Since then, Poulomi prefers the path less trodden. She has slept in the wilderness under a cloudless sky staring at a million stars in search of a guerrilla army whose story strikes right at the very heart of modern India’s global ambitions, through to divided families eking out an Alaskan existence on the last rocky outpost of American soil. Time and again, she has found herself amongst ordinary people who quietly challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of the world in which they live: rural women in armed conflict, a mother's pain for a son lost to ISIS, to the wonder of a near blind child reaching for the light.

Poulomi is forever in awe of the resilience shown by those in extraordinary circumstance, by those who are bent but not broken. Her work has become known for documenting the role of women in isolated communities and conflict zones and more generally for advocating for the rights of women. As a result of Poulomi’s work in putting this issue of menstruation and hidden and normalised forms of violence against women on the international agenda she was invited in January 2017 by Al-Jazeera to be a guest on The Mystery of Mensuration edition of their programme The Stream.

In December 2015, she shared a platform with the parents of the Nirbhaya Delhi rape victim talking about her social activist initiative, The Rape in India Project. And, in January 2016 at the UN Young Changemakers Conclave, Poulomi spoke on the social impact of sustainable development with specific reference to her long-term project A Ritual of Exile and her collaboration with NGO Water Aid and their To Be A Girl campaign, which raised £2 million, using this material. Poulomi was featured alongside Hilary Clinton as one of the one of the 'Amazing women from around the world giving their best advice' by Refinery29.

Poulomi was part of the VII Mentor Program. She is based between New Delhi, India and London, UK. She has covered issues across Asia, Europe and America. She is co-founder and director of Just Another Photo Festival, a festival that democratizes photography by taking photography to the people and forging new audiences. She was on the jury for the Photographic Museum of Humanity Grant 2017 Next Generation Prize, and has has also undertaken the 'Reporting in Crisis Zones' hostile management training at Columbia School of Journalism, kindly supported with a bursary from the Rory Peck Trust.