As part of the University’s 2020-2021 academic theme year, Penn IUR held a photo contest on civic engagement in cities around the world. Participants were asked to capture the ways that urban community engagement has adapted to altered social circumstances and working conditions amid a year of unprecedented public need. Guest judges included Penn IUR Faculty Fellows Ira Harkavy, Associate Vice President and Founding Director, Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships; Ken Lum, Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor and Chair of Fine Arts, Weitzman School of Design; and Akira Drake Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design.
The jury selected Avijit Ghosh’s photograph “Together we Fight, Together We Win” which depicts Pavel Biswas, a volunteer from a youth wing of the Indian political party CPIM, sanitizing a COVID-19-positive family's home in Kolkata, India.
Ghosh noted that many young people like Pavel volunteered to help fight India’s deadly second wave of the pandemic. “Many people have not been able to afford this service [having their homes sanitized],” said Ghosh, adding that he submitted this photograph in hopes it will inspire others. “We have not yet overcome Covid,” he said. “In future if a similar situation arises again, more youths can come up inspired by Pavel’s story and photograph.”
Judges selected the winning photograph for its expression of the contest theme and its remarkable composition. Lum described the image as a picture within a picture. “There are pictures of family above the bedroom doorway and the point of view is rather startling, from what feels like the far end of the bedroom while a stranger goes about sanitizing the home,” he said. Rodriguez added that it “captures … our fragmented approach that blend[s] public and private in ways that may disappear from view but which are forever going to be embedded in our futures.”
The jury also selected three runners-up and a finalist.
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