HIPA announces $120,000 grand prize winner

For this year’s Special Awards, the Photography Appreciation Award ($20,000) and the Photographic Research/Report Award ($25,000) were given, respectively, to Oscar Mitri and Don McCullin (who will also be Master of Photography at Photo London in May this year). In prior years, Steve McCurry and Sebastião Salgado have received the Photography Appreciation Award, while the Photographic Research/Report Award has previously gone to Lytro founder Ren Ng and educator Scott Kelby.
The awards were presented by members of the judging committee, which included documentary photographer Maggie Steber; Michael Pritchard, Director-General of the Royal Photographic Society; Stephen Mayes, former CEO of VII Photo Agency and Monica Allende, co-founder of London’s Offspring Photo Meet.
The contest received over 80,000 entries from almost 33,000 photographers hailing from 173 countries, including India, Russia and Iran, with almost 4,000 entrants residing in the United Arab Emirates.
The award was launched in 2011 by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the 33-year-old Crown Prince of Dubai, who has 3.3m followers on Instagram. HIPA is part of a concerted effort to kickstart Dubai’s standing in the arts, along with Dubai Photo Exhibition, taking place later this week. HIPA’s Secretary General Ali bin Thalith says: “we hope that we were able to open a new page filled with happiness throughout the past year using our many visual and educational photography courses and programs”, and noted that 66% of this season’s participants were entering the competition for the first time.
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