Pictures of the Year : 70th annual International photojournalism contest

A selection of prize-winning photographs from the 70th annual Pictures of the Year International photojournalism 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.

 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-Arqoobneighborhoods 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 Second Place - ISSUE REPORTING PICTURE STORY (Joe Amon/The Denver Post) Alice, a homeless addict from Kansas, uses her shirt to tie off her arm looking for a viable vein to do her heroin in the bathroom of a Taco Bell near downtown Denver. Places with a lock on the door are some of the best spots to use. With the rising drug problems on the streets, downtown restaurant's are always on the look out for drug users constantly stopping in just to use the facilities.

POYi - COMMUNITY AWARENESS AWARD (Arnau Bach/Freelance) Zed and his girlfriend Myriam are talking in the Crystal Club, one of the more expensive discotheque in Paris.

 POYi First Place - ISSUE REPORTING PICTURE STORY (Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times) Pill bottles line a dresser and pack a nightstand in a scene familiar to many households where prescription drug addiction has taken hold.

 POYi NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (Paul Hansen/Dagens Nyheter) Two year old Suhaib Hijazi and her big brother Muhammad, who soon was to be four years old, were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their father, Fouad was also killed. Their mother is in intensive care at Shifa hospital. According to their religion the dead are buried quickly. The badly mangled body of Fouad is put on a stretcher and his brothers carry his dead children to the mosque for the burial ceremony. When darkness fell over Gaza this day, at least 26 new victims were to be buried. That makes the total more than 140 dead so far since the beginning of the bombardment. Approximately half of the dead are women and children.

 POYi FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos) This Gazan university student works in a tunnel, hauling goods to earn money for tuition. Many workers put in 12-hour shifts six days a week "or more" in the cramped spaces. Gas explosions, electrocutions, and Israeli air strikes are common. Gaza, Palestine 2011.

POYi First Place - PORTRAIT SERIES (Oded Balilty/Associated Press) A Palestinian stone thrower wrapped in a Palestinian flag and masked in a kaffiyeh to conceal his identity, poses for a portrait, in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah on Wednesday, June 13, 2012.

 POYi Award of Excellence - PORTRAIT SERIES (Alexandre Van Enst/Freelance) The African Society of Elegant People, the "SAPE", was born in the years after the independences of Congo-Brazzaville and Zaire. Today there are two major schools of "SAPE", respectively inspired by the French and Japanese aristocracy. They clash with high fashion brands, millimetered steps and gestures, from Paris to Kinshasa, during parades in honor of their founding masters, or simply at the Mass of Sunday. Codified art of sham, glamor and "hast thou seen" for some, for others the SAPE is a metaphysic, a special relation with the question of being and appearance. Sassy, narcissistic and rebellious, the "sapeur" is a romantic. The "sapeurs" of the "War of hundred years" defy the power in place: the Leopards. Led by the great masters such as Tshikose, Sesele and Kadhitoza, the Congolese dandies constantly reinvent themselves to shine.

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 becomeconcentrated 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.

POYi First Place - SCIENCE & NATURAL HISTORY PICTURE 

STORY (Bob Croslin/Freelance) A cedar wax wing that was 

brought to the sanctuary with an injured wing. The bird is a migratory species but cannot be released because it can no longer fly.

POYi NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (Paul Hansen/Dagens Nyheter) One quickly notices that the inmates have extensive experience with the chains. To walk over uneven terrain and simultaneously keep track of the long chains without stumbling takes a lot of practice. A few miles from the prison the bus comes to a halt on a vast open field. The group disembarks as a unit and walks to their workstation. 

POYi First Place - SCIENCE & NATURAL HISTORY (Iwan Baan/Freelance) The aftermath of hurricane Sandy which left New York city powerless.

POYi First Place - PRESIDENTIAL 2012 (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Staff members reflected in the window of the room where Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney works before a campaign rally in North Canton, Ohio on October 26, 2012. 

POYi Third Place - PRESIDENTIAL 2012 (Damon Winter/The New York Times) Logistics manager Boby Batts carries a painting of the Obama family off of Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews after the President returned from a day of campaigning in Florida and Ohio. The painting was given to President Obama by a supporter in Florida earlier in the day, Tuesday, October 23, 2012.

POYi First Place - OLYMPIC ACTION (Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse) South Korea's Shin A Lam (R) fences against Germany's Britta Heidemann during their Women's Epee semifinal bout as part of the fencing event of the London 2012 Olympic games on July 30, 2012 at the ExCel centre in London.

POYi First Place - RECREATIONAL SPORTS (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters) Competitors work to pull a woman up an obstacle where competitors must jump to the top of a half pipe during the Tough Mudder at Mt. Snow in West Dover, Vermont on July 15, 2012. The Tough Mudder is a nine mile endurance event which runs competitors through a military style obstacle course complete with mud, water and fire.

POYi First Place - SPORTS FEATURE (Mike Roemer/Associated Press) The Green Bay Packers' Donald Driver celebrates a touchdown by doing a Lambeau Leap in the second half of the Packers game against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

POYi SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) Gabrielle Douglas competes on the beam during day 4 of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team Trials at HP Pavilion on July 1, 2012 in San Jose, California. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

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 Third Place - FEATURE (Aaron Huey/Freelance for National Geographic Magazine) Stanley Good Voice Elk, a heyoka, burns sage to ritually purify his surroundings. In Oglala spirituality, Heyokas are recipients of sacred visions who employ clownish speech and behavior to provoke spiritual awareness and "keep balance," says Good Voice Elk. Through his mask, he channels the power of an inherited spirit, which transforms him into Spider Respects Nothing.

POYi FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR (Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos) Twelve-year-old Khamis Abu Arab (at left) was playing outside when he found an undetonated shell. He brought it home, where it exploded in his face. A series of operations in an Israeli hospital removed shrapnel from his eyes but couldn't restore his sight. Gaza, Palestine 2011.

POYi First Place - FEATURE (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press) North Korean residents and a soldier take public transport on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, North Korea on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012.

POYi - ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AWARD (Brent Stirton/Getty Images) Workers prepare tusks for the burning of 5 tons of illegally trafficked ivory recovered from a seizure in Singapore. The burn was meant as a symbolic protest against the rampant increase in Ivory poaching across Africa. Kenya is the only pro-ban country in Africa. The ivory burnt here was originally from Malawi and Zambia. Five tons of the original 6.4 tons were burnt and the remainder will supposedly be sent back to the 2 countries of origin. It was burnt in Kenya under the auspices of the the Lusaka Task Force, a group of affiliated countries who are supposed to form a common front against wildlife crime in Africa. The ivory burning is regarded with some cynicism from conservation quarters. No Kenyan ivory was added to the pyre, despite stocks in excess of 65 tons and their appropriation of the PR value of this event. Chinese people who were present were heard to comment: "Why are they burning their money.

POYi First Place - SPOT NEWS (Manu Brabo/Associated Press) A Syrian man cries while holding the body of his son, killed by the Syrian Army, near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012.




Source : Denver Post / POY

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Nostalgic Feel

By Sammer Dhalwani

Sameer took these pictures and said,"these are a few black and white images from my recent visit to Kashmir  Let me also state that ,these are not the traditional 'beautiful nature shots',and these were never meant to be.The pictures are just an extension of the thought process or my state of mind. I shot these pictures with a very story teller kind go approach and that is one of the reasons these pictures are in black and white with minimal or no editing rather then the colorful Kashmir  And I go by my theory 'all pictures aren't supposed to be perfect'. these pictures have certain nostalgic feel to it."

Sameer Dhalwani Is Mumbai Based Photographer 

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Faith Healing In Kashmir

By Robert Nickelsberg and Judith Matloff

Families in Kashmir are falling apart, literally and psychologically. Caught for decades between a militant separatist uprising and brutal government suppression, they are increasingly turning to Sufi holy men, along with Western medicine, to cope with their distress.

 To cope with unprecedented psychological distress, many Kashmiris turn to holy men known as peers. They practice Sufism, a mystical school of Islam imported from Middle Asia in the 14th century, and are believed to have miraculous powers of healing. After reciting Koranic verses and blowing into a water bottle, peer Munshi Syed Hussin Kazmi runs beads over this young man’s face to restore his sight.

Thousands of people have died or disappeared during two decades of Islamic separatist uprising in Indian-ruled Kashmir. The unending violence has spawned what experts say is one of the highest levels of post-traumatic stress in the world. This woman just lost her son, who was mistaken for a militant and shot as he smoked a cigarette during a wedding celebration.

One of the most popular peers was late Ahad Sahib, from the town of Sopore. He is also among the more eccentric – sitting naked under a blanket without uttering a word to the believers at his feet.

Many people see peers regularly, such as Hameeda Nazir, a mother of two whose brother and husband who were killed by security forces several years ago.

Up to 600 faithful can converge on peer Ahad Sahib’s house on a given day to seek his blessing. They extend all manner of things to be touched, from sacks of rice to salt, pens and identity cards

Peer Munshi Syed Hussin Kazmi uses beads as he treats a couple for anxiety and depression.

Funerals are a reminder that new deaths can exacerbate old traumas. Hameeda Nazir had been coping with the loss of her husband until another relative died recently. Then her heart palpitations, insomnia, and sense of dread returned.

 After tossing herbs in a charcoal brassiere, this peer jotted down a Koranic verse on a piece of paper and instructed Hameeda Nazir to wear it close to her heart. Then he handed the pair some  blessed rock sugar, which they were to eat to dispel disturbing symptoms.

Other peers are more like faith healers. For instance, Munshi Syed Hussin Kazmi keeps regular consulting hours much like a doctor. He strokes patients with daggers and beads to relieve their stress.

Western medical experts may question these methods as unscientific, but they provide a powerful salve for the pain of deeply spiritual Kashmiris.

Robert Nickelsberg is a photojournalist currently documenting the ongoing effects of terrorism in South Asia and the Middle East. He has worked in photojournalism for more than three decades. Recent work includes assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq for publications such as TIME and the New York Times.

 Judith Matloff was a foreign correspondent for 20 years, lastly as the bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor in Moscow and Africa. She teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and and is the author of Fragments of a Forgotten War (1997) and Home Girl (2008). 

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