The 2015 Silver Camera Award, the Netherlands’ most important prize for photojournalists, was awarded to photojournalist Eddy van Wessel. According to the jury, after winning the Silver Camera Award in 2012, the photographer once again demonstrated that his visual talent, perseverance, and commitment were exceptional.
Van Wessel created a series about the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: Sinjar, the Battle for Highway 47.
The refugee crisis dominated the news, and many photographs told its stories. According to the jury report, it was almost symbolic that the conflict underlying the large numbers of refugees in Europe was the subject of the series that won the 2015 Canon Silver Camera Award.
The battle documented by Van Wessel was described by the jury as the starting point of the refugee’s journey. The coast of Lesbos, where discarded inner tubes used by refugees still floated in the sea; the arrival of a young asylum seeker at his new temporary home in a former government ministry in The Hague; emergency accommodations in a sports hall; and residents’ efforts to help refugees: these were stories that often originated, directly or indirectly, in the story told by Van Wessel.
Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Yazidi militias, supported by the U.S.-led international anti-IS coalition, were attempting to recapture the city of Sinjar from Islamic State (IS). A year earlier, thousands of Yazidis had been killed there, and all remaining Yazidis had been forced to flee. The northern part of Sinjar was under coalition control, but IS forces were only fifty meters from the front line and were well armed. One of the main objectives was to seize the strategically located Highway 47, which runs from Mosul to Raqqa, and thereby cut off an IS supply route. Sinjar, Iraq, September 2015
It was the second time Van Wessel had won the Silver Camera Award; he first received the prize in 2012.
Photographers received awards in nine categories. Marielle van Uitert won the International Documentary (series) category; she had previously written for Fotografie.nl. View one of her articles here.
