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Meet the Judges
uganda press photo award
Jul 2, 2020
Location: Kampala, Uganda

Every year we work hard to assemble a jury which brings international experience and local context to the judging process. This year our jurors come from around the continent and the world and their backgrounds in journalism, education and fine art stand them in good stead for the task ahead. The group's many years of experience in diverse fields ensures that all awarded images will have been selected by a panel whose opinions are respected, unbiased and rigorous. As always, we are proud to present such a distinguished jury and we thank each and every one of them for their time, commitment and generosity in supporting photography. 

Take some time out from your busy day and look at some great photography by getting to know their work!

Uganda Press Photo Award and East African Photography Award


Mallory Benedict is a photo editor on the History desk for National Geographic, commissioning original photography across print, digital, and mobile platforms. Her work has been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), Society for Publication Designers (SPD), National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA), and Pictures of the Year International (POYi). Benedict graduated from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism where she studied photojournalism, anthropology, and political science.

Paul Botes is the picture editor of the Mail & Guardian in South Africa and has won numerous awards for his work. His work focuses primarily on issues of social justice and inequality. Paul has taught photography at The Market Photo Workshop and runs an intern programme that works regularly with students from a variety of schools from all over the world. He has been working on a long term “slow journalism” project with journalist Niren Tolsi which follows the aftermath of the 2012 Marikana massacre in South Africa.

Yasuyoshi Chiba is AFP Chief Photographer currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. He started working as a staff photographer for Japan's national newspaper Asahi Shimbun. In 2007, he moved to Kenya as a freelancer and joined AFP as a staff photographer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2011. His works have been recognized with many photography awards including World Press Photo (1st for People in the News Singles in 2009, 1st for People in the News Stories in 2012) and Pictures of the Year International (award of excellence for news picture story in 2012, 3rd for sports picture story in 2015, 1st for Portrait in 2016). In 2020 he was awarded World Press Photo Of The Year for his photographs of a young man reciting protest poetry during a blackout in Khartoum, Sudan.

Carielle Doe is a freelance shooter/producer who has a deep love for journalism. With a focus on human interest stories, she has worked on projects all over the world. Carielle worked as field producer in Liberia for ABC News throughout the Ebola crisis. Before Ebola, Carielle was a multimedia producer and consultant on projects for various news outlets, private companies, and non-governmental organizations. Carielle advanced past more than 40,000 other competitors to win the 2010 Your Big Year competition, which allowed her to travel to 16 countries as field producer and photographer on the 2011 Your Big Year trip. During the trip, she documented volunteer projects in education, health, environmental conservation, and construction. Early in her career, Carielle worked as a production associate at ABC News and then as an associate producer at NBC News in New York City.  She has an MA in journalism from New York University with a focus on documentary. She also serves as New Narratives Videography and Photography mentor, a role in which she works with video reporters and photographers on their stories.

Benjamin Füglister is an artist and cultural entrepreneur born in Switzerland in 1978. He has lived in Berlin, Germany, since completing his studies at the Basel Academy of Art and Design in Switzerland, and at the University of the Arts Utrecht in the Netherlands. In his artistic practice he questions social conventions and explores their visual transformations. His particular interest is photography as a medium for visualizing the shifts in the human image. Benjamin Füglister has been a member of the European Photography magazine editorial staff since 2006, and in 2009 he established piclet.agency, a platform for hand-picked photographic portfolios and directory for photography festivals, magazines and institutions. He is the founder of the annual CAP Prize, the prize for contemporary African photography, tendered for the first time in 2012. Füglister is a nominator for the renowned Prix Pictet, and sits on the Photo Basel artistic advisory board. He is the founder of the IAF Basel – Festival for Contemporary Art and regularly engaged as a reviewer at international photography festivals. www.benjaminfueglister.com

Georgina Goodwin is a documentary photographer and Canon Ambassador born and based in Kenya. Her work focuses on women, refugees, social issues and the environment, and is best known for her award-winning coverage of Kenya’s post-election violence, cancer in Kenya, the Westgate terror attack, and refugees in Tanzania. Georgina is a contributor to Getty Images and Everyday Climate Change, a member of Women Photograph, and a speaker at TEDxKakumaCamp, the first TED talks to be held at a refugee camp.  Her work has been published by NY Times, Elle, Vogue, AFP and many others, and has been exhibited in Times Square NYC, Tokyo Japan and The Louvre Paris amongst others.

Lekgetho James Makola is the head of Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg. He has been on the judging panels for several international photography and arts Awards in the past 4 years, including being the 2020 World Press Photo Awards Chairperson of General Jury and participated as a reviewer in the 2018 New York Times Portfolio Review. Lekgetho has a Fine Art degree from Durban University of Technology in Durban, South Africa. His artistic achievements include a Bronze Sculpture commission for President Nelson Mandela. He is an International Ford Foundation Fellow on Social Justice 2009, and a Graduate of Howard University in Washington DC USA with a MFA in Film Studies 2013 which he used to start initiatives like Kali TV, Parallel Film Collective and Local Equals Global. He worked for the Durban Art Museum, Robben Island Museum including an internship at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He also founded an independent production company KGETHI IMAGES (Pty)Ltd in August 2014 South Africa, which focuses on film, photography and art productions. Lekgetho is an active member of the virtual continental network Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa.

Cynthia R Matonhodze is a Zimbabwean documentary photographer, photojournalist and videographer currently based in Harare. Matonhodze successfully completed the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography program at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2012. In 2013, Cynthia was shortlisted for the ZimRights Human Rights Journalist of the Year Award for her portrait documentary story on a local power utility’s negligence that cost people their lives and left others permanently disabled.  In 2016, she participated in the first World Press Photo Foundation East Africa Masterclass. She is a 2019 Magnum Foundation Photography & Social Justice Fellow. Cynthia is also a founding member of the Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers as well as a member of Women Photograph. Her work focuses on human rights and social issues mostly in her native country Zimbabwe. 

Frédéric Noy is a French photographer whose documentary approach favours the chronicle as a narrative mode. His work, mainly focused on Africa, describes a continent under construction, whose history, beliefs and traditions are tirelessly rubbing shoulders with an irrepressible mutation. Successively based in Tanzania, Nigeria, Sudan, Chad and Uganda, his photographic stories linger on the trough of the news, on unexpected stories or on the existence of populations socially excluded, stigmatised or caught up in the gears of conflicts. A proponent of Slow Journalism and intrigued by the issue of taboo, he spent several years on a work about sexual minorities in the Great Lakes region which was published by "Les Belles Lettres" in 2020, as a book entitled: "Ekifire". His latest project, centred around Lake Victoria and rewarded with the Visa D'Or Magazine 2019, focuses on the dilemma between survival and environmental preservation that is plaguing the populations living around Lake Victoria, in East Africa. One of the images from this story was awarded 3rd place in the Environment category of the World Press Photo 2020 Contest. His reports are regularly exhibited during Visa Pour l'Image, and appear frequently in French and international publications. He is currently based in Central Asia and is represented by Panos agency.

Uche Okpa- Iroha is the Executive Director of the Nlele Institute in Lagos, Nigeria, a Pan African nonprofit art photography organization. His own photography draws attention to the African continent where he uses cinematic narratives to investigate the stereotypical representation of deviant or marginal cultures. Uche is a founding member of Blackbox, a Nigeria photography collective. He is a two-time winner of the Seydou Keita Award at the 8th and 10th Bamako Encounters with his “Under Bridge Life” and “the Plantation Boy” projects respectively. He is a contributor to several publications including “Lagos – the City at work”, “Nigerians Behind the Lens” and “Unifying Africa”. Uche is an alumnus and ex-resident of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2011/2012) and was among the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass selection committee in 2016.

Sarah Waiswa is Ugandan-born, Kenya-based documentary and portrait photographer with an interest in exploring the New African Identity on the continent.  With degrees in sociology and psychology, Sarah’s work explores social issues in Africa in a contemporary and non-traditional way.  Her photographs of people living with albinism and ballet dancing in the Kibera area of Nairobi have generated dialogue through their visual poetry. In 2015, she was awarded first place in the story and creative categories in the Uganda Press Photo Awards and second place in the Daily Life and portrait categories. In 2016 she was awarded the Discovery Award in Arles, France and in 2017 she was awarded the Gerald Kraak Award in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2018, she was named a Canon Brand Ambassador and was selected for the World Press Photo 6x6 Africa Program. Her work has been exhibited around the world, most recently at the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam and also part of the group show "African Mētrópolis. An Imaginary city" at the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome. Her photographs have been published in the Washington Post, and Bloomberg, among other publications.


Young Photographer Award


Edward Echwalu is a documentary photographer and photojournalist with a wealth of experience spanning a decade, having worked across the African continent. As photojournalist, a writer and blogger, he has covered major and historical events around Uganda and the continent, many of which, have been in the areas of health, conflict and development. He has previously done freelance work for Reuters News Agency, The Daily Monitor, The Observer Newspaper and a number of NGO’s. He’s a current contributor to Everyday Africa, part of Everyday Projects. He emerged the 1st Runner Up in the CNN African Journalist of the Year Awards 2012 (Muhammed Amin Photographic Award) in Lusaka, Zambia, for his coverage of opposition protests in Uganda (Walk to Work). In 2013, his submission was among the highly commended at the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award (Muhammed Amin Photographic Award) in Cape Town, South Africa. Echwalu was also a winner of Uganda’s coveted Photojournalism price, The Cranimer Mugerwa Photojournalism Award 2009. 

Juliette Garms is a writer, photo editor and project manager currently working at the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam. With a background in human rights law (SOAS, London, UK) and photojournalism (Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa), Juliette is interested in questions of representation, diversity and ethics in the visual journalism industry. In 2016, she helped launch the African Photojournalism Database together with Everyday Africa. She has since then been working closely with emerging and professional photographers from all over the world on diverse educational programs, exhibitions and special projects.

Ala Khier was born in Nyala, Sudan in 1985. Since secondary school photography has been an obsession for him, but 2005 was the real start when he started reading in depth about photography and purchased his first SLR. After returning to Sudan in 2009 Ala Kheir and his colleagues started Sudanese Photographers group with the aim to develop and promote photography in Sudan. Ala is also active in photography education and development in Africa, he runs TOV (The Other Vision, photography platform) which is a member of CLPA (Centers of Learning Photography in Africa). He is currently Based in Khartoum.
 
Anna Kuā‡ma is the director of the Uganda Press Photo Award, a photography platform and annual competition for East Africa. She also works as an independent curator. Born in Krakow, Poland, she holds master degrees in Cultural Policy and Management, and Film and Photographic Studies, and is passionate about photography and visual literacy. In 2014 she was selected to participate in the Independent Curators International Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa. She has worked with Makerere Art Galley/Institute of Heritage Conservation and Restoration, the National Art Gallery in Nyanza, Rwanda and the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe. She has curated, co-curated and assisted many exhibitions, most notably “Kabbo ka Muwala- Migration and Mobility in Southern and Eastern Africa”. She lives in Kampala. 

Annette Sebba is a photography lecturer at The Margaret Trowell School of Industrial Design and Fine Art, Makerere University, Kampala. Previously, Annette was an Art Director at Adapt TBWA (QG Saatchi & Saatchi) and MAAD Advertising. In the Department of Visual Communication Design and Multimedia, Annette conducts classes on photography and design communication. She is passionate about photography, photographers and communicators in other fields. Her experiences in fine art, together with her background give her unique perspective having worked with both analog and digital. Recently, Annette participated in a training at Goethe Institute, Johannesburg, bringing African photographers together to share experiences and opportunities that will strengthen the network and streamline teaching photography on the continent.

Katie Simmonds is a photographer, visual storyteller and the manager of Canon's sustainability programme, Miraisha, which has trained and many young African youth in photography, filmmaking and printing to support livelihoods and establish careers. Katie has also developed a "train the trainer" programme, which has already trained 20 local African visual storytellers to become professional educational trainers in the field of photography and filmmaking. Katie started her career working as a press photographer. She has collaborated and worked alongside countless reputable and awarding photo organizations in the industry including: Ian Parry, World Press Photo, Visa pour l’image, and Getty Images. Katie is excited to review the portfolios of the entrants and is looking forward to finding a dynamic, diverse and talented young photographer who will help foster and strengthen the Ugandan photo community.

UGANDA PHOTO PRESS PHOTO AWARDS

The Uganda Press Photo Award(UPPA) is a platform for photographers and people interested in photography in Uganda and East Africa.
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