Young photojournalists from 75 countries competed in the contest this year. The shortlist includes photographers from 19 countries – Russia, the US, France, India, Italy, Spain, Iran, Bangladesh, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Belarus, South Africa, China, and – for the first time – the United Kingdom, Austria, Argentina, Brazil and Haiti.
This year's works are distinguished by their painterly quality, through which young photojournalists have tried to express the most pressing problems of our time — from social and political clashes to environmental issues. Beauty, they believe, has a great humanistic influence that can save the world.
"The philosophy of the noosphere and problems with the oceans; the revival of exotic jobs in modern India; and the preservation of the ecological balance in Congo; the outbreaks of the Ebola virus on the African continent; and the religious traditions of small nations — these are just some of the subjects that our shortlisted photojournalists have depicted", Oksana Oleinik, the curator of the Andrei Stenin Contest and head of Rossiya Segodnya's visual projects, said.
According to Oleinik, young photojournalists have no such concept as a "closed" or run-of-the-mill topic.
"Our contestants suggest that in today's world there is no separate disaster or well-being, one is connected with the other. Viewers cannot help but be surprised and amazed by how skillfully and accurately they reveal these links", she added.
The Grand Prix and category winners will be announced in September at the stenincontest.ru and stenincontest.com websites. The contest plans to launch a traditional tour of its laureates across cities around the world by the end of the year.
The contest is named after Rossiya Segodnya's photo correspondent — Andrei Stenin — who was killed while covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Its main goal is to support young photographers and draw public attention to the challenges of modern photojournalism.
