PDI front page photo wins award from SND

One of 2016’s most talked about photos just bagged an award from the Society for News Design (SND)’s annual Best of News Design Creative Competition.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s front page photo last July 24, 2016 won silver for Photography-Breaking News at this year’s Best of News Design Creative Competition from SND. The photo, taken by Inquirer photographer Raffy Lerma, shows a woman cradling her partner’s lifeless body, a victim of an apparent vigilante killing brought about by the current administration’s war on drugs.

“The gripping image stops you immediately and pulls you into studying its details, which make you feel like you are witnessing a tragedy in person: their bare feet, the sidewalk, the signs,” the SND judges said in a comment.

“The photograph is perfectly composed, the lighting is gorgeous, and the emotion is potent,” it added.

SND is an international organization for news media professionals and visual communicators. Their annual Best of News Design Creative Competition invites entries from all magazines and general circulation newspapers – daily or non-daily, broadsheet or tabloid, traditional or alternative – published anywhere in the world, as well as syndicates and cooperative material used in newspapers.

Judging for this year’s competition happened at St. Petersburg Coliseum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

According to Inquirer’s article on the award, Lerma’s silver medal is granted for work that rises above excellence, representing “an elevated level of execution, originality of concept, or high-end work done with a high degree of difficulty.”

Lerma’s photo, however, was met with controversy online. Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has gone on to say that the shot was “too dramatic”, comparing the photo to Michaelangelo’s La Pieta during his first State of the Nation Address.

 

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer