MADS NISSEN, John and Alex, 2014. Life for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people is becoming increasingly difficult in Russia. Sexual minorities face legal and social discrimination, harassment, and even violent hate-crime attacks from conservative religious and nationalistic groups. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Contemporary Issues, Singles.)
RAPHAELA ROSELLA, Laurinda, 2014. Laurinda waits in her purple dress for the bus that will take her to Sunday School. She is among the many socially isolated young women in disadvantaged communities in Australia facing entrenched poverty, racism, trans-generational trauma, violence, addiction, and a range of other barriers to health and well-being. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Portraits, Singles.)
ÅSA SJÖSTRÖM, Birthday Chocolate, 2014. Igor hands out chocolates to a classmate to celebrate his ninth birthday. When he and his twin brother Arthur were two years old, their mother traveled to Moscow to work in the construction field and later died. They have no father. They are among thousands of children growing up without their parents in the Moldovan countryside. Young people have fled the country, leaving a dwindling elderly population and young children. Copyright the artist. (Second Prize, Daily Life, Singles.)
SERGEI ILNITSKY, Kitchen Table, 2014, Damaged goods lie in a kitchen in downtown Donetsk. Ordinary workers, miners, teachers, pensioners, children, and elderly women and men are in the midst of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Artillery fire killed three people and wounded 10 on 26 August 2014. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, General News, Singles.)
BULENT KILIC, Istanbul Protest, 2014. A young girl is pictured after she was wounded during clashes between riot-police and protestors after the funeral of Berkin Elvan, the 15-year-old boy who died from injuries suffered during last year’s anti-government protests. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon at protestors in the capital Ankara, while in Istanbul, crowds shouting anti-government slogans lit a huge fire as they made their way to a cemetery for the burial of Berkin Elvan. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Spot News, Singles.)
RONGHUI CHEN, Christmas Factory, 2014. Wei, a 19-year-old Chinese worker, wearing a face mask and a Santa hat, stands next to Christmas decorations being dried in a factory as red powder used for coloring hovers in the air. He wears six masks a day and the hat protects his hair from the red dust, which covers workers from head to toe like soot after several hours of work. Copyright the artist. (Second Prize, Contemporary Issues, Singles.)
ANAND VARMA, Mindsuckers, 2014. When spores of the fungus land on an ant, they penetrate its exoskeleton and enter its brain, compelling the host to leave its normal habitat on the forest floor and scale a nearby tree. Filled to bursting with fungus, the dying ant fastens itself to a leaf or another surface. Fungal stalks burst from the ant’s husk and rain spores onto ants below to begin the process again. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Nature, Stories.)
TOMAS VAN HOUTRYVE, Blue Sky Days, 2013. Several thousand people have been killed by covert U.S. drone strikes since 2004. The photographer bought his own drone, mounted a camera and traveled across the US looking for similar situations as mentioned in strike reports from Pakistan and Yemen, including weddings, funerals, and groups of people praying or exercising. He also flew his camera over settings in which drones are used to less lethal effect, such as prisons, oil fields and the US–Mexico border. Copyright the artist. (Third Prize, Contemporary Issues, Stories.)
AMI VITALE, Orphaned Rhino, 2014. A group of young Samburu warriors encounter a rhino for the first time in their lives. Most people in Kenya never get the opportunity to see the wildlife that exists literally in their own backyard. Copyright the artist. (Second Prize, Nature, Singles.)
DARCY PADILLA, Family Love 1993-2014 – The Julie Project, 1993. I first met Julie on January 28, 1993. Julie, 18, stood in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, barefoot, pants unzipped, and an 8 day-old infant in her arms. She lived in San Francisco’s SRO district, a neighborhood of soup kitchens and cheap rooms. Her room was piled with clothes, overfull ashtrays and trash. She lived with Jack, father of her first baby Rachel, and who had given her AIDS. Her first memory of her mother is getting drunk with her at 6 and then being sexually abused by her stepfather. She ran away at 14 and became drug addict at 15. Living in alleys, crack dens, and bunked with more dirty old men than she cared to count. “Rachel,” Julie said, “has given me a reason to live.” For the next 21 years I photographed Julie Baird and her family’s complex story of poverty, AIDS, drugs, multiple homes, relationships, births, deaths, loss and reunion. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Long-Term Projects)
PETE MULLER, Ebola in Sierra Leone, 2014. Medical staff at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center work to escort a man in the throes of Ebola-induced delirium back into the isolation ward from which he escaped. In a state of confusion, he emerged from the isolation ward and attempted to escape over the back wall of the complex before collapsing in a convulsive state. A complete breakdown of mental facilities is a common stage of advanced Ebola. The man pictured here died shortly after this picture was taken. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, General News, Singles.)
MASSIMO SESTINI, Rescue Operation, 2014. Shipwrecked people are rescued aboard a boat 20 miles north of Libya by a frigate of the Italian navy. After hundreds of men, women and children had drowned in 2013 off the coast of Sicily and Malta, the Italian government put its navy to work under a campaign called “Mare Nostrum” rescuing refugees at sea. Only in 2014, 170,081 people were rescued and taken to Italy. Copyright the artist. (Second Prize, General News, Singles.)
Glenna Gordon, Mass Abduction in Nigeria, 2014. School uniforms belonging to three of the missing girls. For the past few years, Boko Haram has been burning villages to the ground, using forced recruitment and carrying out an ongoing insurgency. Many thousands have died and the region has been devastated. No one took much notice before the girls were kidnapped. In May 2014, a hashtag campaign (#BringOurGirlsBack) became viral on Twitter and swept the globe. Within a week, it had attracted over two million tweets. A media frenzy began and coverage of the protests was extensive. But the thing that’s been missing from most of the coverage is the girls themselves. Copyright the artist. (Second Prize, General News, Stories.)
Yongzhi Chu, Monkey Training for a Circus, 2014. A monkey being trained for circus cowers as its trainer approaches. With more than 300 circus troupes, Suzhou is known as the home of the Chinese circus. Copyright the artist. (First Prize, Nature, Singles.)
