Photo from Ukraine named UNICEF's image of year
Photo from Ukraine wins UNICEF contest (RBC-Ukraine collage)
The photo, which was taken in Ukraine, won the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition. It depicts Ukrainian children running across a flowering field, with smoke from shelling rising in the background, according to UNICEF.
The photo by Polish photographer Patryk Jaracz symbolizes the light of children's resilience and joy that breaks through the darkness of global wars, conflicts, and disasters.
Polish photographer and documentary filmmaker Patryk Jaracz has been documenting events on the ground since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. He captured touching moments like the one in the winning photo: five-year-old Alina, accompanied by her friends, is practicing her bike riding.
A moment of serenity under the black clouds of death in a meadow in the Rivne region of northwestern Ukraine. The night before, a drone set fire to an oil storage facility here.
In this case, it was just an oil depot, no homes, no hospitals, no schools. Not every day and not everywhere since February 2022 has the war in greater Ukraine been so intense that it could completely extinguish the light of Ukrainian children. Polish photographer Patryk Jaracz points this out in this photo. But at the same time, in his report, he refers to the trauma of children's psyche.
"The 2023 UNICEF photo shows a moment of serenity under the black clouds of war in a meadow in northwestern Ukraine. Accompanied by her friends, five-year-old Alina is practicing her bike riding. The night before, a drone set fire to an oil depot," the statement says.
At the award ceremony in Berlin, UNICEF Patroness Elke Budenbender emphasized that amid bad news, we must do everything we can for children around the world to work together to bring good news and turn unstable situations into acceptable ones. And so that children everywhere can grow up in peace and dignity.
"It is children like five-year-old Alina and her friends who give us hope and make us optimistic about the future," she added.
Photo: Patrick Jaracz
