A South African has won the illustrious World Press Photo Multimedia contest in the category Short Feature. Marco Casino scooped up the prize – with its 1 500 euro cash prize and a Golden Eye Award – for his work on the piece 'Staff Riding'.
A South African has won the illustrious World Press Photo Multimedia contest in the category Short Feature. Marco Casino scooped up the prize – with its 1 500 euro cash prize and a Golden Eye Award – for his work on the piece 'Staff Riding'.
‘Staff riding’ is slang for the widespread phenomenon of train surfing in South Africa.
The vast majority of surfers are under 25, and due to the highly dangerous nature of the activity, amputations of limbs and even deaths are not uncommon.
In a context where violence, alcohol and drug abuse, rampant poverty, and AIDS reign supreme, train surfing symbolizes the search for social redemption that will never come for the characters of this story.
The other two categories, Long Feature and Interactive Documentary were won by Turkey's Emin Özmen and Barış Koca, and Canada's Katerina Cizek respectively.
The World Press Photo Multimedia contest is set up seperately from the annual photojournalism contest the organisation runs.
Different rules of entry apply and the entries are judged by different teams of jury members.
Jury member Marianne Lévy-Leblond spoke on the need to create a seperate multimedia facet to the organisations work.
“The notion of multimedia is changing all the time. We constantly find new trends in the field and we try to approach them differently every time. This is an evolving field and we should approach it as such," she said. “What fascinates me the most is the level of engagement. The entries had high levels of interaction, from the user experience to distribution, and the use of social media.”
The awards will be presented at the Awards Ceremony on Friday 25 April in Amsterdam.
