İstanbul Photo Awards ‘one of the good’ contests for journalists: Prize-winning journalist

By Esra Tekin

ISTANBUL (AA) - The İstanbul Photo Awards is “one of the good” contests that holds significant importance globally for journalists, said a photojournalist who won during the 2020 competition in Iran.

“This is a very important competition all around the world, especially for the Iranian photographers. This is one of the good competitions for photojournalists in the Middle East,” Yalda Moaiery, winner of the 3rd prize in the story portrait category at the international news photography contest organized by Anadolu, said.

Sharing her journey of becoming a photojournalist with Anadolu after winning the 10th annual edition, Moaiery said she wanted to show the world the “pain and sorrow of all the people around the world” through her lenses.

She said she always has tried to tell stories that have influence across the world to “show war” all around the world.

“My story was a local story, but it has a general view for all people, all around the world,” she said, adding that somehow her local story turned into a “worldwide story.”

As a female journalist, she always has tried to focus on problems that women around the world face through her pictures.

“As a female photojournalist, I want to focus on their stories. Maybe it's because of the gender, their pain is my pain. I want to show their problems, their issues, to the world,” she said.

She pointed out that there are women photojournalists across the world who want to show people “how much problems women have all around the world.”

- İstanbul Photo Awards

The 10th anniversary of the İstanbul Photo Awards, organized by the Turkish international news agency Anadolu is a contest for photojournalists from around the world to share their photographs with the world.

The contest, which evaluates single and series photographs in news, sports, environment, portrait and daily life categories, received more than 20,000 submissions this year.

A total of 32 photographers were awarded prizes in 10 categories.

This year, the competition was sponsored by Turkcell as the communication sponsor, Sony as the award sponsor, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency as the overseas events sponsor and Turkish Airlines as the airline sponsor.