Photos of the winners of the Andrei Stenin International Photo Contest organised by the Rossiya Segodnya news agency, under the patronage of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, are being displayed in the city for the second consecutive year.

The exhibition at the AIFACS gallery at Sansad Marg is replete with dozens of photos by the world’s best young photographers from Russia, India, South Africa, Italy, the US, France and many other countries.

The highlight of the exhibition is the photographic series The Wretched and the Earth taken by Italian Grand Prix winner Gabriele Cecconi. The series is a truly tragic epic about the forced confrontation between man and nature. It focusses on the Rohingya refugees and the Southern regions of Bangladesh put on the brink of slow destruction by their migration. The heroines captured by Francis Rousseau (France) for “The Women of Arugam Bay” are women from Sri Lanka who decided to learn how to windsurf. One of the most staggering photos that took the first prize in the My Planet category is by Justin Sullivan of South Africa. It depicts an African elephant that was killed by ivory-hunting poachers in Northern Botswana.

The display includes photos taken by four winners from India. Kolkata-based journalist and freelance documentary photographer Debarchan Chatterjee earned an honourable mention from the competition jury in the Top News category for his photo focussing on the protest movement.

 The main objective of the contest is to support young photographers and draw public attention to the challenges of modern photojournalism. It’s a venue for young photographers who are talented, sensitive and open to everything new.

(The exhibition will remain open from 11 am to 7 pm till December 5.)