The jury of the Global Peace Photo Award selected the work “Dreams of Childhood” by Mexican-British artist Elisa L. Iannacone from 21,220 submissions from 112 countries.
On 23 September 2024 the winners of the international Global Peace Photo Award competition were presented with the Alfred Fried Peace Medal at the Austrian Parliament for the twelfth time.
Winners of the Global Peace Photo Awards 2024
Elisa Iannacone from Great Britain / Mexico for “Dreams of Childhood“.
Danila Tkachenko from Russia / Italy for “Inversion“.
Maryam Saeedpoor from Iran for “Women, Life, Freedom“.
In the single images category
Antonio Aragón Renuncio from Spain for “The Dancer“.
In the children’s category
Daria Heß from Germany for “Happiness“.
In his welcoming address, Wolfgang Sobotka, President of the Austrian National Council, emphasised the extraordinary cooperation with the Global Peace Photo Award and how important it is to provide a forum for peace in these times. As far as conflicts in general are concerned, it will only be possible to overcome them through dialogue, said the President of the National Council. The framework for this can only be a liberal democracy that knows how to respond clearly to different points of view without marginalising them. From Sobotka’s point of view, the Global Peace Photo Awards allowed the topic of peace to flow into everyday life by honouring photographers who have “put their finger in the wound” with their lens.
This commitment is clearly visible in the Austrian Parliament. The pictures of the award winners are displayed in the auditorium for one year at a time. This is the room where the press conferences mainly take place
Peace Image of the Year 2024
The main prize “Peace Image of the Year 2024”, endowed with 7,000 euros, went to the Mexican-British artist Elisa L. Iannacone.
They suffer from severe chronic kidney problems or are waiting for a heart transplant: little patients in the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, South Africa. Much, maybe everything, that defines childhood – growing up carefree and with fun – is beyond their reach.
But surely they have wishes, desires, dreams. Only, how to express them?
Photographer and multimedia artist Elisa L. Iannacone had an enchanting answer. She specializes in visualizing people’s visions in comprehensive collages. She is a woman of whom you can say she can heal broken wings. With magic stage sets that help the insured to gather new strength.
The boys and girls in Mandela Hospital, as well as the hospital team itself, got kidnapped by Elisa L. Iannacone. Liberated through imagination and play. The beds: suddenly props in a wonderland. The pain: overcome with laughter. The sadness: reversed into cheerfulness. The fight: turned into peace.
Elisa L. Iannacone, born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a Canadian father, saw herself as a “translator” from an early age. At first for her parents, who could barely speak the language of the other, then in her international career as a photographer as the voice of those who had lost theirs to grief. The victims of war and sexual violence. She has witnessed death, rape and destruction directly and from close quarters.
Iannacone studied in Toronto and London, worked as a photo reporter in Jordan and Iraq, in Egypt and other African countries. She has travelled in 75 countries, created large exhibitions and participated in festivals.
This is how jury member Peter-Matthias Gaede summarised the merits of Elisa L. Iannacone’s work in his laudatory speech.
The Children’s Peace Image of the Year 2024
The best peace image in the children’s and youth category, “The Children’s Peace Image of the Year 2024”, worth 1,000 euros, was won by 14-year-old Daria Heß from Germany with her picture “Happiness”.
The jurors from 11 countries decided: “Why is the picture we are honouring here a picture of peace for 14-year-old Daria Heß from Hamburg? ‘Peace for me means being able to be happy and accept life, even while you also have worries and fears. Peace means having the energy to be led more by the beautiful things than by difficulties.’ This is what Daria Heß wrote under the picture she sent us from Hamburg.
And the photo visualizes what she means. Daria is 15 years old and seems to have many interests and options. If you google her, she pops up in the winner lists of school chess tournaments and maths olympics as well as in the participant lists of swimming competitions. Looking for new challenges, her father says, Daria has just switched to a boarding school in England for a year.
Daria links the word happiness with the word self-determination. And both with word peace.”
Daria’s face was beaming not only because of the award, but also when she was presented with a Leica D-LUX 8 by Johannes Dietrich, Managing Director of Leica Austria, which “should inspire her creative possibilities.”
The award was presented by Harald Riener, Member of the Managing Board, Vienna Insurance Group (VIG), which has been the main sponsor of the Global Peace Photo Award for many years: “As an international insurance group represented in 30 countries, peace is a key concern for us. As people and as a company, we need a peaceful environment in order to be able to develop. That’s why we at Vienna Insurance Group have supported the Global Peace Photo Award from the very beginning. We have supported the Children’s Peace Photo since its inception and have been the main sponsor of the entire award since 2022.”
Lois Lammerhuber, who initiated the Global Peace Photo Award together with his wife Silvia Lammerhuber and has organised it since the beginning, reminded the audience that “peace is not the absence of war, but something I would like to call ‘successful living’. With all their creative and artistic passion, the photographers formulate an ode to respect for the fragility of our world. They evoke the relationships between people and nature as a mission for responsible living. With their talents, their gaze and their visions, they describe the social and ecological challenges that we can no longer afford to let go of. They captivate our gaze with photographs that go straight from the eye to the heart and encourage us to resist stagnation, indifference and the prevailing populism. An appeal to the world that is firmly inscribed in the heart of our award.”
UNICEF is a partner of the Global Peace Photo Award for the first time
Hubert Schultes, President of UNICEF Austria: “As UNICEF, the world’s largest children’s rights organisation, we are particularly pleased that the Global Peace Photo Award addresses two central issues for every child and children’s rights: peace and participation, because there is no childhood without peace!
What does peace look like? This question, answered photographically by young people, helps us to give children and young people the opportunity to express their opinions. Participation is another key children’s right. Let’s listen to children and young people! Childhood needs peace!”
Keynote speech by Rosa Logar
Rosa Logar, founding member of WILPF- Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Austria, gave the evening’s keynote speech: “Why we have to put peace in the picture – that is the title of my speech. We have to do it in order to give peace a space and peaceful developments a chance. Because, as the Austrian writer Marlene Streeruwitz writes in her handbook against war, ‘We know nothing about peace. We do not learn about peace. We do not learn about peace. War is the only reported event in our understanding of history’.
The Global Peace Photo Award is an antithesis to the dominance of war. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a time of enormous military build-up. According to statistics from the Swedish research institute SIPRI, global military spending in 2023 totalled 2.4 trillion dollars. That’s 2443 billion dollars. It’s hard to imagine how much money that is, but to give you an example: It could fund the work of the United Nations for about 670 years. Or the work of the United Nations women’s organisation, UN Women, for 6700 years. These are unimaginable sums of money that we are missing when it comes to fighting hunger in the world, ensuring health care and education and protecting the climate.
Only peace is life. Let us continue to work together to bring peace into the picture.
Extract from the keynote speech by Rosa Logar.
The Alfred Fried Peace Medal 2024 and the €1,000 prize were awarded to:
Antonio Aragón Renuncio from Spain for “The Dancer”. Spanish photographer Antonio Aragón Renuncio has caught this moment of happiness in eight-year-old Ivan, when a personal victory over fate is on the horizon. The little boy is all smiles, looking forward to getting a new orthosis to stabilize his mobility system. A small scene in the Don Orione Center in Bonoua, Côte d’Ivoire. Here they operate on people with physical disabilities like congenital clubfeet and provide medical and psychological care.
Renuncio writes about the Don Orione Centre: “What the little patients experience here will allow them ‘to leave the floor’. To stand up, not just physically.”
Maryam Saeedpoor from Iran for “Women, Life, Freedom”. The hijab, the scarf. A piece of clothing has become a political issue. It stands for cultural history, political fight, oppression or, if left off, for resistance and rebellion.
The work, which was honoured at the Global Peace Photo Award 2024, shows women’s hair. And veiling. A game of hide and seek, a rebellion, an ambivalence. Against the background of famous carpet craft, refracted in colours of uprising and defiance. With the subtle means she has, Maryam Saeedpoor tries to work for a more peaceful life and for the recognition of the many great women in Iran.
Danila Tkachenko, Russia for “Inversion”. Confronting a seemingly cosy world with war. Or: Showing the inhabitants of European cities why so many refugees are there. And what they fled from. This is what Russian-born photographer Danila Tkachenko, now living in exile in Italy, sets out to do. In cooperation with nine photojournalists he has created large-scale memory boards from their pictures of destroyed buildings in Ukraine – and put them up in front of tourist attractions in Western Europe.
And in front of each board: refugees from Ukraine. There they stand, in front of bomb craters, collapsed apartment blocks, burnt parks, the ruins of churches and schools. In front of pictures of a disrupted, a shot-through homeland.
Is this what peace looks like? No, of course not. So one might ask why we chose Tkachenko’s work for the Global Peace Photo Award. We did because his pictures are a cry for peace.
(Excerpts from the laudationes by Peter-Matthias Gaede)
About the Global Peace Photo Award 2024
21,220 images from 112 countries were submitted for the Global Peace Photo Award 2024. Most of the submissions came from India, Germany, Russia, Iran and the USA. The submissions were judged by a high-calibre international jury. See: https://globalpeacephotoaward.org/jury
The Global Peace Photo Award is organised in cooperation with Edition Lammerhuber, Photographische Gesellschaft (PHG), UNESCO, the Austrian Parliament, the Association of Parliamentary Editors, the International Press Institute (IPI), World Press Photo Foundation, POY LATAM, LensCulture, APA – Austria Press Agency, the German Society for Photography (DGPh), Unicef Austria and Vienna Insurance Group.
The prize was inspired by the Austrian pacifist and writer Alfred Hermann Fried (* 11 November 1864 in Vienna; † 4 May 1921 in Vienna). Fried was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911 together with Tobias Asser, organizer of the first International The Hague Peace Conference and instigator of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
For questions and enquiries please contact:
Lois Lammerhuber
lois.lammerhuber@friedaward.com
www.globalpeacephotoaward.org
