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DOCUMENTARIES WITH A POINT OF VIEW

UNICEF Photo of the Year Award - Stephanie Sinclair

December 19, 2007 7:40 PM, by Theresa

Freelance photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has won the 2007 UNICEF photo of the year award for her striking portrait of a 40-year-man and his 11-year-old bride in Afghanistan.

Portrait of soon to be wed Faiz Mohammed, 40, and Ghulam Haider, 11, at her home in a rural village of Damarda in Ghor province

Portrait of soon to be wed Faiz Mohammed, 40, and Ghulam Haider, 11, at her home in a rural village of Damarda in Ghor province © Stephanie Sinclair

Sinclair was featured prominently in the 2004 P.O.V. documentary, War Feels Like War, which documented the lives of reporters and photographers who circumvented military media control to get access to the real Iraq War. We interviewed Sinclair on the P.O.V. website later that year to find out more about her work.

Since 2004, Sinclair has continued to live and work in the Middle East, based out of Beirut, Lebanon. The winning picture came out of a series on child brides that Sinclair shot in Afghanistan, Nepal and Ethiopia. According to the UNICEF site:

During her stay in Afghanistan, it consistently struck American photographer Stephanie Sinclair how many young girls are married to much older men. She decided to raise awareness about this topic with her pictures. Particularly as the official minimum age for brides in Afghanistan is sixteen and it is therefore illegal to marry children.

Early marriages are not only a problem in Afghanistan: worldwide there are about 51 million girls aged between 15 and 19 years who are forced into marriage. The youngest brides live in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where 15 percent of all wives are not even 10 years old when they are married. Child marriages are a reaction to extreme poverty and mainly take place in Asian and African regions where poor families see their daughters as a burden and as second-class citizens. (link)

View more of Sinclair's photography, including the entire child bride series, at her website: stephaniesinclair.com.

(via Boing Boing)

Tags: Middle East, P.O.V. Film Archive, Photography

Posted by Theresa on December 19, 2007 7:40 PM | PermaLink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks ()

Comments

hi ; i am homa from iran , direcly i wana know how i can send e photo for this photography festival (unicef photo of the year ) and what is the database of that ; i searched some key word in internet but i didn't find any thing , anywher i will be glad if you replay my CM and say me what is the correct way.

thank you;


homa.

Posted by homa | September 19, 2008 3:10 PM

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