Istanbul Photo Awards winner talks about Iraq image

By Andac Hongur

ISTANBUL (AA) - The winner of the Istanbul Photo Awards’ 2017 Photo of the Year said on Tuesday his image -- Fleeing From Daesh -- was intended to show “the escape process of the civilian population” from areas controlled by the terror group.

In an interview, Frederic Lafargue he and a writer friend were assigned to prepare a story and photographs about the civilian population in Mosul, northern Iraq, for Paris Match news magazine.

Mosul has been at the center of fierce fighting between Iraqi forces and the Daesh terror group.

"We came up with an idea of showing the escape process of the civilian population from the impact of Daesh in the Mosul region and we wanted to explain how the escaping civilian population was being secured," he said.

Lafargue started his career at a local newspaper in France in 1988 and started working on nationals in 1991 as a local correspondent in southwestern France.

Having followed Turkish photography for a long time, Lafargue said the quality of work in the country was at a high level.

"I think there is a competitive photography school in Turkey. I have many Turkish photographer friends," he added.

"I am honored to have won this award… I think this is an exceptional exhibition and other competitions should be inspired by it,” Lafargue said.

Last year, photographers Abd Doumany, whose image of an injured Syrian boy was chosen as Photo of the Year by an international jury, and Sergey Ponomarev, who caught images of refugees arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos for The New York Times, won the single news category and later a Pulitzer Prize.

In 2015, Daniel Berehulak was the winner of the competition's Photo of the Year for his coverage on the Ebola epidemic in Liberia after his work won the Pulitzer Prize.