All About Photo Awards 2021 - The Mind's Eye: Joshua Irwandi from Indonesia is 2nd Place Winner with his image „The Human Cost of COVID-19“: The body of a suspected coronavirus victim, wrapped in yellow infectious waste plastic bags and wrappers, lies on the patient's deathbed awaiting a body bag in a hospital in Indonesia. The wrapping of the patient, which takes two nurses a full hour to complete through three layers of plastic and nine times of disinfection, is intended to suppress the spread of coronavirus. As mandated by the Indonesian Ministry of Health, the wrapping of the body is a standard procedure for every suspected, comorbid, and positive confirmed COVID-19 deaths. This process continues until today. As is the case with most victims, family members were not allowed to say goodbye. After the image was published by National Geographic, the image sparked denial and uproar across social media. Many who saw the image declared it to be a set up intended to spread fear.By the end of the year, 563 medical workers in Indonesia have perished due to the pandemic, with the country’s coronavirus toll reaching over 800,000 cases and 20,000 deaths.
Photo © Joshua Irwandi
The 6th annual competition attracted an extremely high caliber of photographers from around the world. The winners come from 23 different countries and 5 continents.
2020 was a peculiar year with the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, but also with the Australian and US West Coast Wildfires, the popular uprisings in Hong Kong, Columbia, Chile and Venezuela, The Black Live Matters protests, the explosion in Beirut... Yet the idealism of past years has not been completely tarnished and the images submitted show the rich diversity of our planet, with photographs ranging from a Porter in Kolkata to the human cost of COVID-19 in Indonesia. From underwater life in Japan to Irish Travelers. Or from a detention center in Latin-America to a fishing boat in Vietnam... Crossing borders, spanning cultures, and traversing the most remote corners of the world, the featured photographers all captured life in its most vivid forms.
The Winners of All About Photo Awards 2021 - The Mind's Eye
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Joshua Irwandi (1991) is a freelance documentary photographer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was also 2021 awarded with the 2nd Prize at the World Press Photo Award (General News).
He received a B.A. in English literature from the University of Exeter, and pursued graduate studies in photojournalism and documentary photography at London College of Communication. While working in West Papua, Indonesia, Irwandi focused on a long-term project on the changes in identity and landscape of the Asmat people. His project ’Not A Blank Canvas’ was awarded the 2021 National Geographic Society exploration grant. Irwandi was a participant in the 2014 New York Portfolio Review, as well as the Eddie Adams, Magnum Photos, and VII Photo workshops. In 2020, he was awarded the Forhanna Foundation Fund for Young Talent and the National Geographic Society’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists. He has exhibited at Breda Photo Festival in the Netherlands. In 2021, he was selected as one of the speakers for the National Geographic Society's Storytellers Summit. His work has been featured in National Geographic, The Times of London, and The Guardian.
World Press Photo Involvement:
Award-winning photographer 2021 Photo Contest
