Image from Trócaire project hailed at Irish photography awards

A stunning image captured at a Trócaire project in Pakistan has been hailed at the AIB Press Photographs Association of Ireland (PPAI) awards.

Irish Independent photographer Mark Condren’s picture of a 96-year-old grandmother, taken at a Trócaire-supported gender project in Hyderabad, Pakistan, won second prize in the competition’s portrait category.

Mark, along with his colleague Louise Hogan, travelled to Pakistan with Trócaire to report on the impact of donations to Trócaire’s emergency appeal to respond to the flooding of 2010. Mark and Louise visited programmes that were being funded by the extraordinary response of the Irish public, who donated €8m to Trócaire to help the people of Pakistan.

It was while visiting a project which supports women in the south of the country that Mark captured the striking image of the hand of a young Pakistani boy gently touching the face of his 96-year-old grandmother.

“I was taking photographs of some of the women receiving help at the project when I turned to my left and saw this elderly woman,” Mark recalls. “The way the light hit her face was remarkable. It was just by chance that she happened to walk into the room when she did. She was 96-years-old and had never been outside of her village. She was a lovely woman and it was a real pleasure to get to photograph her and to talk to her.”

The PPAI awards showcase and reward excellence in Irish photojournalism and this year almost 2,000 images were submitted to the competition by 120 photojournalists from all over the country.
 

The winning and highly commended prints will now form the AIB Photojournalism Exhibition, which will tour selected AIB branches over the coming months.