Age-positive photography competition - winning entries announced
The Centre for Ageing Better and global stock image library Alamy have announced the winners of their joint photography competition to demonstrate the diversity of older age groups.
‘Ageing: New Perspectives’ ultimately aimed to challenge stereotypical depictions of ageing and older people often seen in stock images.
Earlier this year, Ageing Better and Alamy launched a joint competition inviting photographers to submit images challenging stereotypical depictions of older people.
The competition was created to raise awareness of negative representations of ageing and encourage contributors to find new ways to show over 50s in a more positive manner.
The entries show older people taking part in their daily lives whilst avoiding the stereotypes typically present in stock imagery.
The winning entries have now been selected drawing on the joint expertise of Alamy, the world’s most diverse stock photography collection with around 150,000 images added every day by thousands of photographers from across the world, and the Centre for Ageing Better, a charity pioneering ways to make ageing better a reality for everyone, including launching a campaign to challenge ageism later this year.
Entries were received from a range of countries including Bulgaria, the Maldives, Sweden and Canada.
Photographers could submit their images under three categories – Leisure Activities, Underrepresented Communities and Multigenerational – and a winner was chosen for each category.
Mohammad Javid Ahmadi won the Leisure Activities category for his image of an older person on a sand dune.
Werner Lerooy’s photograph of a mother and daughter won the Multigenerational category.
And the Underrepresented Communities category was won by Stephen Power’s image of protesters.
The three winning photographers will each receive a personal portfolio review by James Allsworth, Head of Content at Alamy.
Emma Twyning, Director of Communications and Policy at the Centre for Ageing Better, said:
“Congratulations to all three of our winners for contributing powerful images depicting aspects of older age we rarely see in the media. We had to choose between so many brilliant photos, but the subject matter of the winning images really stood out.
“Images of ageing we commonly see in the media, advertising and stock image libraries, often reduce people to damaging stereotypes. Countering these ideas and highlighting diverse experiences of ageing is key to tackling the widespread ageism that exists across society."
James Allsworth, Head of Content at Alamy, said:
“We expected to see a wide range of styles and subjects in the entries for this from the Alamy global contributor base and that’s exactly what we got.
“One of the best things about working with so many photographers from different backgrounds is seeing the variety of content produced, even under the same broad subjects. The competition was strong, congratulations to all winners for producing some amazing photos.”