By Fatih Yorganci
ANKARA (AA) – Photojournalists from Turkey’s leading news source Anadolu Agency on Thursday were recognized by the Pictures of the Year (POY) International Award.
Anadolu Agency's team received the finalist award in the category of Local Team Picture Story of the Year with the photo series “An Open Door to Europe”.
Photojournalists Sebnem Coskun, Elif Ozturk, Arif Hudaverdi Yaman, Gokhan Balci, and Onur Coban’s 20-image photo series depict a group of asylum seekers in Turkey’s northwestern border province of Edirne hoping to go to Europe.
The annual photo competition is a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism in the US and has been awarding the best photojournalism since 1944. The awards are given in various categories after reviewed by an expert jury in the field of press photography every year.
This year’s Local Team Picture Story of the Year is a new premiere category and “recognizes the collaborative effort of a photo staff covering a single topic that is important to its local audience,” according to POY’s website.
“It is a narrative picture story or series that is comprised of pictures taken as part of a team or staff effort to cover a local issue or news story,” it added.
– Anadolu Agency received POY awards 4 times in past
Among members of this year’s jury were Cheriss May, J.B. Forbes, Shoun Hill, Marie D. De Jesus, Alex Wong, Preston Gannaway, Adrees Latif, Alysia Burton Steele, Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez, Deanne Fitzmaurice, Steph Chambers, Jose Carlos Fajardo, Elizabeth Cheng Krist, Alyssa Schukar, Katie Orlinsky, Ron Tarver, Samantha Appleton, Michael Robinson Chavez, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Carl-Pillipe Juste, Sue Morrow, Brian Palmer, Shaminder Dulai, Julie Winokur, Jasmine Goldband, Avi Gupta, Deb Pang Davis, and Brett Roegiers.
Anadolu Agency photojournalists had won the POY awards four times in previous years. The winners included Mosaab Elshamy from Egypt in 2014, Sebastian Castenada from Peru in 2015, Mustafa Hassona from Gaza, Palestine in 2016, and Elif Ozturk from the Turkish metropolis Istanbul last year.
