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Keeping it real: Photojournalism at its best on display in Tokyo
DAYS International kicks against the sterility of mainstream media imagery
Third Prize: "Pakistan Floods" by former Pulitzer Prize winner Adrees Latif.
“The world’s best photos are coming here [to Tokyo]," says the award’s founder, Ryuichi Hirokawa. Clearly, it would be a shame not to head downtown to sample the cream of this season’s crop.
This year’s winners will be on display from May 3-18 in the Konica-Minolta Gallery B &C in Shinjuku. DAYS 2011 will feature 70 photographs covering subjects including war, women’s rights, child labor and the all-too-topical earthquakes. Entrance is free.
Haiti earthquake
At the top of the tree, Danish photographer Jan Dago takes home the DAYS International first prize of ¥1 million (roughly US$10 000) for his photographs of the devastation after the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
Special Prize by Jury: "Haiti's Profound Sorrow" by Carol Guzy.
The Japan residents taking home awards are Robert Gilhooly and Noriko Hayashi.
Gilhooly wins for his photographs of Yamanashi’s Aokigahara forest, often referred to as the Tokyo area’s “suicide forest” for the sheer number of people who deliberately enter, never to return.
Hayashi takes the Public Prize -- the audience choice award -- for covering women living with disfigurement after acid attacks in Pakistan.
On top of their already-recognized work, both photojournalists have spent the past month and a half since March 11 traveling between Tokyo and Tohoku covering the devastation and its human stories.
Other winners from Asia include Athit Perawangmetha from Thailand, Jean Chung and Jae-hyun Seok from South Korea, Suzanne Lee from Malaysia and former Pulitzer Prize winner Adrees Latif from Pakistan.
DAYS founder, Ryuichi Hirokawa.
Impeccable pedigree
Ryuichi Hirokawa wears many caps as founder of the DAYS award, photojournalist, publisher and editor of DAYS Japan and Days International.
Hirokawa covered the massacre of Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugees by Lebanese militias in Beirut in 1982, as well as the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear disasters. He survived kidnapping by Hezbollah and was one of the first journalists to reach the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (on March 13) to check the radiation levels there.
He says his duty is to put himself on the line to report what he believes the public should know.
Hirokawa explains that the DAYS award was set up in 2004 to help photojournalists at a time when print media is in decline and advertising spending is increasingly heading online.
Second Prize: "Oppression From Israeli Authorities" by Ammar Awad.
Just say no
DAYS uses a two-pronged approach that not only helps photojournalists carry out their work by awarding prize money, but also provides a forum in which to deliver coverage of world events free from censorship and news-media manipulation.
Hirokawa says he believes people should be shown that war is about real human devastation, not merely two neat, theoretical armies shooting at each other.
The award panel, Hirokawa says, “receives thousands of photographs each year -- even if they are not winners, there is a chance the photos will be bought [by DAYS] and used for a story.”
Giving some back
He gives examples of how the prize money helps. In one instance, “a photojournalist in Nepal, thought he had to cut short his trip due to low funds. He received a call from DAYS telling him that he had won, that the money was in his bank account and that he could continue his assignment.”
Another photographer, who covered India’s Bhopal disaster, returned to Bhopal and used his prize money from DAYS to help give a little back to that town’s victims.
The judging panels for the prize have featured stellar lineups over the years, including the former head of the Magnum Photojournalism agency, Philip Jones Griffith, Japanese filmmaker Yohji Yamada and the late Asahi Shimbun and TBS journalist Tetsuya Chikushi.
"Haiti Earthquake Aftermath" by Jan Dago, the winner of the DAYS 2011 top award.
Really real media
Hirokawa created DAYS Japan magazine in 2004 after the United States-led invasion of Iraq. Feeling that media coverage of the second Gulf War did not accurately depict the realities of war, he decided to create a forum to publish something closer to the truth.
In March this year, Hirokawa and his team expanded and launched DAYS International online.
The news site provides weekly news in a multimedia, multilingual format. Its Photo of the Week space receives submissions from the best photojournalists from around the world.
Hirokawa says DAYS International is based on the model that journalists from different countries can set up their own DAYS sites and publish material in their own language -- the first other-country site will be DAYS Burma, due to launch soon.
Japan on the map
Hirokawa says he hopes the DAYS team is keeping Japan on the map when it comes to encouraging and publishing photojournalism.
At launch, he says, almost everyone he knew advised him not to go ahead with the magazine, reasoning that something so bold and countercultural would not be financially viable.
Seven years on, DAYS, in all its aspects, goes from strength to strength and continues to help and encourage people across the world to pick up cameras and show life as it really is.
