Anadolu Agency photographer wins award in Latam contest

By Diego Carranza

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Juancho Torres, a photographer for Anadolu Agency, came in second place in the prestigious Pictures of the Year Latin America (POY Latam) photo contest.

Torres took part in the News category (series), with a gallery entitled “Legacy of Landmines” in which he portrays prosthetics handcrafted by the victims of the Colombian armed conflict. As they could not afford a traditional prosthesis, they decided to make artificial limbs with their own hands with materials such as wood, plastic, plastic containers, clothing, leather and metal.

For Torres, these prostheses are one way to show a reality of the people who did not have access to resources or the Colombian health system, so they had to resort to what they had at hand.

“The gallery reflects the creativity of the victims of the conflict, which has no limits. They are mostly survivors, without access to the country's health system and who found a way to live by building their own prostheses,” he said.

Torres said the types of photographs he takes have always been motivated by his social intentions and by his perception of what happens in society.

“I have been working with mines since 2016, and I have ventured into different aspects, such as the empowerment of people who are survivors”, he said.

The photos were taken at the Fundacion Centro Integral de Rehabilitacion de Colombia (CIREC) in Bogota, and according to Torres, the prosthetics are exhibited nowadays as “pieces of art, in order to send a message of peace”.

POY Latam was created by photographers Loup Langton and Pablo Corral Vega in 2011 with the aim of rewarding excellence in documentary and artistic photography in Ibero-America and has become the greatest and one of the most important contests in the region.

The documentary photography contest POY was founded in 1944 by the Journalism School of the University of Missouri-Columbia, whose photojournalism program is the oldest in the world.

*Daniela Mendoza contributed to this story