Here are the winning entries in this year’s Global Ability Photography Challenge.
A little boy balancing precariously on a rope, a colorful bird perched on a tree, and fishermen at twilight all have one thing in common: They caught the attention of a photographer with a disability. The resulting images were among the winning entries in this year’s Global Ability Photography Challenge, organized by Youth4Jobs, a nonprofit organization in India working to help people with disabilities access education and employment.
Now in its third year, the photography competition — run through Youth4Job’s digital platform NotJustArt with help from U.N. India and UNESCO — received 320 entries from 14 countries.
« Persons with disabilities not only narrate stories differently because of their lived experiences, but they also have access to stories beyond the reach of non-disabled individuals », says Vicky Roy, an eminent photographer and one of this year’s judges. He was searching for photos that tell a story and have a strong emotional impact, while also standing out for their composition, creativity, originality, subject, timing and lighting.
Here’s a closer look at the eight winners, who represent a range of disabilities, including speech and hearing impairments, intellectual disabilities and low vision.
Balancing for life
Awinash Kulkarni, 56, became a paraplegic at the age of 21, when he fell 50 feet from the wall of the Bhushi Dam in Lonavala. He feared for the future of the subject of this photo, perched high in the sky to entertain others.
« Seeing the young boy perform by the side of the Atal pedestrian bridge in Ahmedabad, I was struck by his hardship — he was performing a risky act to help his family, at an age when he should have been in school, while his parents were collecting money from those watching », Kulkarni says.
Kulkarni was in the last year of a graduate program in engineering at the time of his fall. « The shock of never being able to walk again hit me more than the years of treatment and rehabilitation, which delayed my getting back to college in a wheelchair », he says. « I’m grateful for my family’s support, and for being employed at Helpers of the Handicapped, Kolhapur, a job that pays me enough to travel, and see and photograph new places. »A colorful guest on an ancient tree
Nithin Yadagiri, a 20-year-old with an intellectual disability, tends to copy what people around him are doing.
« When the selfie culture caught on in India, Nithin started to take selfies, and that soon expanded to taking photographs », says Saraswathi Yadagiri, Nithin’s mother. So when his family was part of a tour group at the Kolleru Bird Sanctuary in November 2023, he joined the crowd in photographing this stunning parrot.
