TEHRAN – The Iranian photographer Yunes Khani has received one of nine honorable mentions from the UNICEF annual contest for selecting a photo of the year.
Khani, who is collaborating with Iran’s Mehr News Agency, was honored for his collection “Father Poured Acid on Us”, the organizers announced on Tuesday.
In his photos, Khani documented the aftermath of an attack in Iran during which a man poured acid over the faces of his wife, Somayyeh, and his two daughters, Rana and Nazanin, while they were sleeping at home in a village in the southeastern city of Bam in 2012, after Somayyeh filed for divorce.
Somayyeh lost her sight in one eye. The skin across her face and arms is covered with rough, discolored scars. Her younger daughter, Rana, now at 3, has been disfigured and also lost one of her eyes. The older daughter, Nazanin, was injured less severely.
“I have worked in this project for two years and previously published a series of photos on the Mehr News Agency website,” he told MNA on Wednesday.
Marcus Bleasdale from UK, Patricia Willocq from Belgium, Sara Lewkowicz and Michael C. Brown from U.S., Laura Boushnak from Palestine, Joachim Adrian from Denmark, Gordon Welters from Germany and Chris De Bode from the Netherlands are other photographers who received honorable mention at the competition.
The Swedish photojournalist Niclas Hammarström won the prize for photo of the year 2013 for a picture showing an 11-year-old Syrian girl wounded in a bomb attack.
SB/YAW
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