Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi’s winning photo
A student with a passion for documentary photography has won a prestigious photography award from Sony.
Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi, a second-year photography student at the University of Portsmouth, won first prize in the culture category of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards Youth Award. The Youth Award is open to photographers aged 19 and under.
Alecsandra, from Romania, said: “I am really proud about this competition. It was a wonderful surprise.
“I discovered photography after many years of being passionate about arts, design and painting. Something drew me into documentary and portraiture. I think it was the fact that people and their stories have always fascinated me.”
Alecsandra’s winning photograph will feature in a month-long exhibition of the winners and finalists at Somerset House in London, and will be published in the Sony World Photography Awards book. The image was taken on New Year’s Eve in the city of Botosani, in the Moldavia region of Romania, and features a mask-dance called the ‘Dance of the bear’, a tradition still practised in rural areas.
According to Alecsandra: “The tradition aims to purify and fertilise the soil for the next year.
“The costumes are kept and preserved for hundreds of years and only used for the New Year’s traditions.”
Daniel Alexander, course leader of the BA (Hons) Photography at Portsmouth, said: “Alecsandra is a fantastic student. She is an extremely talented photographer with ambition and dedication to her work.”
Alecsandra is now in the running for Overall Youth Photographer of the Year, which will be selected from the three youth award category winners and announced at the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards gala ceremony on April 25.
The Sony World Photography Awards were launched in 2008 and are run by the World Photography Organisation. The awards are judged by juries selected from the World Photographic Academy and the wider photography industry.
radu
April 1, 2013
Great job. You make us all very pride.