The winning postgraduate entry, Dan Miller's "Ulaanbaatar Graduation"
The winning postgraduate entry, Dan Miller's "Ulaanbaatar Graduation"
17 November 2009

A powerful portrait of two girls in a remote community surrounded by snack wrappers has jointly won the inaugural UQ School of Political Science and International Studies International photo competition.

“Sticky Fingers” taken by undergraduate Karishma Patel and “Ulaanbaatar Graduation” taken by alumnus Dan Miller were selected from almost 40 entries.

From Kabul to Kenya, East Timor to Ecuador, the photos demonstrated the diversity of the human condition in locations where graduates and undergraduates of the University have visited or worked.

“The competition was designed to encourage students and alumni to reflect on the way images shape our understanding of politics, global events and cross-cultural encounters,” Head of School, Associate Professor Gillian Whitehouse said.

“The judges faced a difficult task – there were numerous engaging and thought-provoking images.”

After the presentation, Ms Patel said she was delighted the judges had been as struck as she was by the image of the two girls from Bardia in Nepal, unable to escape the reach of modern day life.

“I was bewildered there were no taps of running water yet non-biodegradable wrappers of (Haldiram) snacks littered the ground,” she said.

Mr Miller was also pleased his photograph of a group of graduating students in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, was selected as one of the winners.

“I'm excited to know that my work will be on display at the school,” he said.

One of the competition judges, Dr Seb Kaempf said: “The reality of our lives today is that the way we look at and fathom the world we live in is increasingly mediated by pictures, films and video.

“What the shortlisted candidates – and the two winners in particular – did really well was to capture, convey and display the (often hidden) political dimensions of photography, both in terms of content and aesthetics.”

All the shortlisted photographs will be given permanent homes around the school in the coming weeks.

The winners each received a $100 voucher and a framed print of their photograph.

To shortlisted entries can be viewed here.

Media: Gillian Ievers (07 3365 1524, g.ievers@uq.edu.au)