After a lengthy judging process, Sarah Pannell has been selected as the winner of the Send Anywhere Awards
We would like to thank everyone who submitted and congratulate the nine other photographers who were shortlisted for the grand prize: an all-expenses paid trip to their chosen destination. A free e-book of all the finalists’ work can be downloaded here.
Pannell plans to travel to Cairo, Egypt, to work on a project investigating the decline of tourism in the country and how this has affected individuals who once depended on the industry.
“Over the past six years Egypt has undergone intense political and economic upheavals,” says Pannell, when we speak to her following the announcement of the Award. “The idea for this project began on the last evening of a trip I had taken to Japan, after meeting another traveller who was from Egypt. We spoke for hours about his country, including the decline in tourism, once the backbone of the country’s economy, and the effect of this on the general population. From that moment, I knew it was something I wanted to explore further and have been researching around the topic ever since.”
Sparked by the Tunisian Revolution of late 2010, which marked the advent of the Arab Spring, Egyptian citizens took to Cairo’s Tahrir Square in early January 2011 protesting the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Culminating in a dissolution of his government, during the following six years the country has undergone a tumultuous transition, to the detriment of its tourism industry.
An Australian documentary photographer based in Melbourne, much of Pannell’s work observes how landscape is marked by both history and modernisation, exploring the relationship of people and communities to their surroundings. For this project, she plans to visit Cairo’s tourist hotspots – including, the Pyramids of Giza and the Valley of the Kings – during Winter, traditionally Egypt’s high tourist season.
Along with her proposal, Pannell entered a collection of her travel and documentary photography for consideration, which she has developed over the past two to three years in a range of countries including, Iran, Japan, Turkey and her homeland, Australia.
Her pictures convey wanderlust and curiosity, but also a sense of the complexity of the places and communities she makes her subject. So it seems apt that she will use her prize to photograph tourist spots in a country that has long held an exotic mystique for foreign travellers, but whose recent history has thrown all of that into a very different light.”
Pannell is determined to delve into the heart of this changing society and produce a visual documentation of individuals working to reshape their lives amidst these upheavals . BJP are excited to see what she produces and will be showcasing a first-look of this work on its completion.
Sponsored by Send Anywhere: This feature was made possible with the support of Send Anywhere. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.
