Released by Canon:
Ami Vitale Winner of the 2003 Canon Female Photojournalist Award
Ami Vitale, a 32-year-old US photographer, has become the third woman to win the Canon Female Photojournalist Award. Vitale will receive the award for her story Kashmir, A Troubled Paradise, at the photojournalism festival Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan, France, on September 5.
The Female Photojournalist Award, initiated in 2001 by Guy Bourreau, marketing director of Canon Communication & Image in France, was an immediate success. At the time Jean-François Leroy, general director of the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival, welcomed the idea as “strong, original and specific”.
2003 jury
Committed to pushing back the frontiers of photographic creation for practitioners of both sexes, Canon France has joined forces for this award with the French Association of Women Journalists (AFJ). From the start, the quality of submissions and recommendations has been high. The top-flight photography professionals who constituted the 2003 jury were generous with their praise of Ami Vitale’s essay on Kashmir. “Her work is both dynamic and well thought out,” noted Daphné Anglès of The New York Times. Magdalena Herrera, artistic director of the French edition of National Geographic Magazine, described Vitale as “particularly sensitive to the notions of respect and consideration for human beings”.
Kashmir, a troubled paradise
Vitale moved to India at the suggestion of Getty Images, for whom she works regularly. “Kashmir was one of the first places I visited,” she says, “and I instantly fell in love with it. There is so much beauty buried among the madness. It’s been my hope to show more than just the conflict and also offer a glimpse into the culture.” She plays down the fact that she is a woman in the male-dominated world of conflict coverage: “Sometimes it helps, at other times it makes it harder. I just try not to make it an issue.”
A special prize for women, Vitale feels, is a good idea: “I do not deny that women and men are working equally hard. I do think, however, that this prize can encourage other women, especially in parts of the world where there are many more cultural obstacles.”
Canon equipment
Vitale is looking forward to trying out Canon’s latest equipment. “Some clients want me to use digital equipment, while others prefer film. When I’m working on personal projects, I use both an analog and digital camera body and sometimes I only use one, with a short lens. I like to keep it as simple as possible.”
Other honors
Even before her selection for the Canon Female Photojournalist Award, 2003 was proving to be a good year for Vitale. In addition to NPPA and POY awards, she received a World Press Photo prize for her moving images of Muslim and Hindu violence in Gujarat, India. The Children’s Jury of World Press Photo, the world’s largest non-profit organization in photojournalism, which Canon has sponsored for many years, also selected one of Vitale’s pictures.
Solo exhibition
The preceding years have shown that the € 8,000 Canon grant paid to the winner of the award is money well spent. It enables the photographer to develop a body of work on a subject of her choice and be guaranteed a solo exhibition at the following year’s edition of Visa Pour l’Image. Last year, both photography professionals and the general public showed great appreciation for the sensitive images of blind and visually impaired athletes captured by Magali Delporte, winner of the 2001 award. This year Canon user Sophia Evans, whose report on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast earned her the 2002 award, will exhibit her coverage of the social and environmental consequences of oil companies’ activities in the Niger delta.
Ami Vitale – the story so far
Since she was twice runner-up in NCPPA’s College Photographer of the Year award in the early 1990s, Ami Vitale’s career has gone from strength to strength. Prior to establishing herself as an independent photographer in 1999, she worked as an editor in New York, Washington and Prague. Vitale has reported extensively on events in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Titles that have featured her work include Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, The Guardian, The New York Times and the Financial Times. A Magnum grant, POY and NPPA awards and a World Press Photo prize are among the accolades Vitale has received. Her work was also selected for awards in China, Canada and the Czech Republic. Ami Vitale is currently based in New Delhi, India.
For more information about Ami Vitale’s work, visit her award-winning website: www.amivitale.com
Sophia Evans’ solo exhibition will be on show at Visa Pour l’Image in Perpignan from August 30 to September 14.
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