Siena International Photo Awards is an international contest for professional and recreational photographers who are keen on photography. It is held annually in Siena, and the results of this year have recently been summarized.
The winner was Mehmet Aslan, a Turkish photographer. His work was acknowledged as the best among tens of thousands of other photographs that were submitted for the competition by masters and lovers from one hundred and sixty-three different countries of the planet.
The winning photo was shot in Hatay, one of the regions of Turkey. There is a camp for refugees who were forced to leave their native Syria, where military hostilities routinely take place, taking the lives of guiltless local people.
The hero of the picture is a man named Munzir, one of the Syrian refugees. He lost one lower limb due to a shrapnel wound in his leg, which happened after a bomb fell on the territory of the city of Iglib near the market where the Syrian was walking at that fateful moment.
Munzir holds his beloved son Mustafa in his arms and lifts him above him. The boy has neither arms nor legs. The lack of all limbs is the result of severe abnormalities of fetal development of tetra amelia. This upset was caused by serious drugs that Mustafa Zeynep’s mother was forced to take after being severely poisoned by a nerve agent used by militants.
The picture was called “The Difficulties of Life” and it clearly shows that the life of most Europeans is lacking the hardships and sadness that residents of the troubled Middle East continually face. The photo found a response in the hearts of not only the representatives of the jury of the competition, but also some celebrities. So, actress Angelina Jolie in her social network account reminded her subscribers that at the moment about 6 million Syrian children are suffering, and they need help.
The author of the touching photo, Mehmet, will receive a useful gift as a prize – a technique for photographing with a total cost of about one and a half million euros. And he also became the owner of the most reputable title of photographer of the year.