Students judged in Alexia Tsairis photography competition
CORRECTION: The number of deaths in the 1988 Pan Am bombing was previously vmisstated. The bombing killed 270 people, including 11 on the ground. The Daily Orange regrets this error.
Judges and spectators gathered in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on Saturday afternoon for the Alexia Tsairis photography competition.
This year marks the 21st competition initiated by the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Cultural Understanding, a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide financial aid to young photojournalism students and increase their understanding of other cultures.
The foundation was named after Alexia Tsairis, a junior photojournalism student who died in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Tsairis was returning home for Christmas break after spending a semester studying abroad in London. The bombing killed 270 people, including 35 Syracuse University students.
The competition is offered to students and professionals. Each contestant submitted 10 to 20 photographs along with a story proposal, explaining how they will use the photography to promote world peace and cultural understanding. The photographs will be judged by how well they tell the proposed story, technical ability and style.
There will be two first-place winners, a student and a professional photographer. There will also be second-place winners and three awards of excellence given in each student and professional category.
For a full-time undergraduate student in fall 2012, the first-place award is $15,000 to fund a three-month internship with MediaStorm, a multimedia production house in Brooklyn. The award also includes a grant of $1,000 for completing the proposed picture story. In addition, $500 will be awarded to the sponsoring academic department.
The judges this year were Kira Pollack, photo editor at Time magazine; Whitney Johnson, director of photography at the New Yorker; and Maggie Steber, a documentary photographer, according to a Feb. 20 SU News release.
The judges made their decision Saturday, but the winners of the Alexia Tsairis competition will be announced Tuesday.
Published on February 26, 2012 at 12:00 pm
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