International photo tilt MIFA strips winner of award

One of the photos submitted by Sadegh Souri to the Moscow International Foto Awards. His win was later revoked after competition organizers could not verify the story accompanying the photos. Photo courtesy of the Moscow International Foto Awards

A photographer was stripped of his win at an international photography competition after organizers said they were unable to verify the authenticity of his work.

The Moscow International Foto Awards rescinded the win it gave to Iranian photographer Sadegh Souri, who submitted a series of photos which he said were of underage girls on death row in Iran.

"MIFA had to pull the story because the photographs were entered and won in the press/editorial category where the text of the story is as important as the photograph itself," MIFA co-founder Hossein Farmani said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, our researches resulted in receiving ambiguous feedback and since we could not verify an explicit story behind these great and conceptually important visuals we are rejecting this entry and award the first prize to another entry."

Souri's story and photos ran in a number of international publications, such as The Guardian and Lensculture, and was recognized by such bodies as Unicef.

But MIFA was unable to verify the story behind the photographs to its satisfaction.

"His explanation was that the story got exaggerated and he tried to correct it by contacting Guardian but they would not change the story," MIFA program director Lydia Em said.

Legendary Filipino photographer Emmanuel "Mannix" Santos said that if the story is fictionalized, then the photos' strength is "eroded."

He added, "There are rules in every competition and one has to respect the rules and not to twist them for their own benefit because it doesn't add up as fair...[to] those who were endeavoring to enter it with total purity of intentions."

By decision of the jury president, the title of MIFA 2016 Photographer of the Year has been awarded instead to Tom Jacobi for his series "Grey Matter(s)."

The Moscow International Fotography Awards is a prestigious international competition that accepts entries from all over the world. Filipino photographers are among the more than 10,000 who submitted entries to the annual competition. These include Jeoffrey Maitem, Jeslani Reyes, Patrick Rivera, Teovel Iradon, Neil Oracion and Edwin Loyola. — BM, GMA News