Winners: WACC Photo Competition 2006

This year's number of entries, and the very high quality of images, show that the theme of Media and People are part of the thematic and visual concerns of professional and amateur photographers across the world.

WACC congratulates all the entrants and thanks them for their submissions.

Use the links here to see the full list of entries, the shortlist and the winning photographs on Flickr.

After much deliberation a final list of winners was announced by the Jury on Monday 8 May:

First Prize. Photograph: Drama. Photographer: Cinish Narayanan, India

As a grey-haired man sleeps on a busy pavement, exhausted and probably destitute, a film star seems to stretch forward from an adjacent poster, looking over him in a gesture of compassion, as if she were a physical part of the scene.

Both figures engage us, one an actress from the rich, glamorous overindulged world of film, and the other a picture of human wretchedness and abandonment, ignored by even those around him. One is overvalued, and the other is undervalued, the disposable junk of a consumer society. One is a fantasy, the other a reality.

The image leaves the viewer unable to reconcile the depicted players with any degree of comfort. As we confront the picture we also participate, and as we look away we are left with a sense of deserting the homeless, the marginalised, the poor, leaving the scene without contributing to solve the problem.

The jury noted that this image addresses the competition theme by asking important and awkward questions about the relationship between commercial advertising media and the brutal reality of poverty that many people across the world face daily.

Commendation: Photograph: The Lyricist / El Lírico Photographer: Emilio Valdes Espinosa, Cuba

This photograph reveals a profoundly social dimension of the media. It describes in a dramatic instant the power of media to value human dignity, to enable participation, and to be fun.

The photograph shows a person with learning disability singing with all his heart at the closure of a social psychiatry congress in Cuba, an event that coincided with the opening of a national workshop on the use of communication and media in psychiatry.

Commendation. Photograph: Girl searches for names on Memorial Wall in San Salvador. Photographer: Paul Jeffrey.

A young girl runs her fingers along lines of names carved into a stone wall, names of 25,000 civilians killed during the recent civil war. It is in El Salvador, but it could be in one of very many countries. Though she is perhaps too young to understand the full meaning of the monument, she is tracing a message of profound significance to society.

Monuments are often overlooked as a means of communication, but they are our most enduring and important messages. This shows perhaps our oldest form of communication as for thousands of years we have been leaving messages on walls for those that come after us.

Commendation. Photograph: Women animators in the Gaza Strip. Photographer: Ahmad Qadadah for Theatre Day Productions Archives

This is mainly an outstanding photograph because the content is so rare. Not only are women across the world restrained from communicating, but in Palestine a whole nation is restricted and controlled. Though it may seem a less than remarkable image, this picture shows four young Palestinian women breaking enormous barriers to communicate.

Their expressions tell us how captivated and absorbed they are in learning to use new technology to creatively articulate their views, themselves, to build a message, to say what they want to say.
It outlines some of the potential that participatory media can have, and illustrates the overcoming of oppression on gender and nationality.

Commendation. Photograph: Camera. Photographer: Orianomada, Argentina

The image shows Mayan people in vividly coloured indigenous dress, who despite the anonymity of the balaclavas under their straw hats, somewhat compromised by press credentials on lanyards, they are immediately recognisable as Zapatistas from Chiapas. Until recently the people of Chiapas had virtually no way to bring their voice to a world audience, but the use of alternative media by social and indigenous movements worldwide is now modelled on the Zapatista movement. Their use of media to strengthen and support their culture is one small part of their message and the video camera is indicative of this. The main thrust of their message is much more important however, it is about survival. The jury refer the reader to the photographer's adjacent picture that depicts the funeral of 45 indigenous peasants massacred in Acteal, a picture taken on the same day.

Commendation: Portable Radio in the Sierra Maestra / Radio Portátil en la Sierra Maestra. José Meriño Cespedes, Cuba.

Rural peasants in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba listen intently to a radio on the table. The sun is pouring in the window, a hen and chicks are on the earthen floor by the men's boots. This is a beautifully captured photograph, in composure, lighting and content. The scene is a typical one in rural areas worldwide, where radio is the only media to regularly reach villages. It speaks about the need for media to address the reality and needs of the listeners.