Katie Orlinsky won the first place award of a stipend towards a three-month MediaStorm internship in Brooklyn, as well as funding to complete her project, “Innocence Assassinated: Living in Mexico’s Drug War.” Her project looks under “the well-known narrative of cartels and crime to a less covered story of Mexico’s drug war: the innocent victim.”
A young boy in La Montana region of Guerrero, Mexico. Opium poppies grow only kilometers away from the homes of the indigenous people of the region, where daily life is defined by extreme poverty, drug trafficking and military harassment. Photo by Katie Orlinsky
Her project looks under “the well-known narrative of cartels and crime to a less covered story of Mexico’s drug war: the innocent victim.”
Katie Orlinsky is currently a student in the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism as Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism Fellow. She regularly works for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and various non-profit organizations around the world. Her work has been published in Life, Newsweek, Le Monde, Stern, Time, Paris Match, Adbusters and the International Herald Tribune among others. Katie graduated from the Colorado College with a BA in Political Science and Latin American Studies.
Oxana Onipko won the second place award to fund her project, “Russian North Caucasus, Dagestan: Violence Waits in the Shadows.” “A documentary project about the complex and violent conflicts inside Russia’s North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan, the most dangerous place in Europe.”
MAKHACHKALA, DAGESTAN, RUSSIA – NOVEMBER 2010: Aishat Dzhavatkhanova, 57, visits the grave of her son on November 23, 2010 outside Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia. Her son was abducted and killed in unclear circumstances in June 2009. He was 27. Photo by Oxana Onipko
“A documentary project about the complex and violent conflicts inside Russia’s North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan, the most dangerous place in Europe.”
Oxana Onipko is a Russian photographer based in Moscow, studying at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. While there, she is focusing on the contemporary social issues of the former Soviet Union. After four years of a career in finance, Oxana decided to return to school as a means to pursue a career in photojournalism and documentary photography. She has worked as a photo editor for the Moscow Times and has had work recognized by POYi , as well as exhibited in Moscow.
The judges awarded three Awards of Excellence to students Gabriel Romero, Raymond Thompson and Ismail Ferdous.
Gabriel Romero, a student at Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, Cal., is doing his project on the people of Israel and Palestine embroiled in conflict.
Raymond Thompson, a University of Texas-Austin graduate student, is focusing his project on the effects of mass incarceration within African American communities and families in a “post-racial” America.
Ismail Ferdous, a student from Pathshala South Asian Media Academy, in Dhaka, Bangladesh is doing his project on the people of a place called Shatkhira, Sundarbans who are being profoundly affected by environmental changes due to the impacts of global warming.
The competition was judged at Syracuse University on Feb. 25, 2012. The judges were Whitney Johnson, Director of Photography at The New Yorker, Kira Pollack; Director of Photography at Time; and Maggie Steber, independent documentary photographer.
