An image of a girl on a bicycle with two friends in a meadow in northwestern Ukraine, in “a moment of carefree under the dark clouds of war,” is the winner of the 24th edition of the international contest in which the The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Germany chooses the best photo of the year.
The winning image “Under the dark clouds of war”, by Polish photographer and documentary filmmaker Patryk Jaracz, “symbolizes the light of childhood resilience and joy that breaks through the darkness of wars, conflicts and global catastrophes” , says the statement.
The photo shows Alina, five years old, riding a bicycle with her friends, while in the background you can see a column of smoke from an oil tank that caught fire the night before after being hit by a drone.
“It is children like five-year-old Alina and her friends who give us hope and make us look optimistically towards the future,” said UNICEF-Germany sponsor Elke Büdenbender during the awards ceremony in Berlin.
“Surrounded by bad news, we owe it to children around the world to do everything we can to make good news together and to make precarious situations acceptable, so that children around the world can grow up in peace and dignity.” , he added.
The second prize went to the German photographer Oliver Weiken for his report “In the holes of Chinarak” about child labor, specifically, about Afghan children who crawl a hundred meters or more into the mines of Chinarak to extract coal from the mountains at north of Kabul.
Russian photographer Natalia Saprunova, who lives in France, received third prize for her report “Children of the Great Cold Forest” about the children of the indigenous Evenki people, documenting the transformation of childhood in Yakutia, Siberia.
According to Peter-Matthias Gaede, member of the jury and the German Unicef committee, “the Unicef Photos of the Year confront us with the reality of the lives of girls and boys around the world.”
“We see moments of individual carelessness. And the opposite of a perfect childhood. We see bravery. And hardships. We see children victims of structural violence, poverty and lack of rights. We see images that cannot leave us cold,” he added.
What may remain the same is “the fact that children are, above all, one thing: children, regardless of where and under what circumstances they live,” he added.