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MANILA, Philippines—Freelance photojournalist Vicente Jaime Villafranca has won the prestigious 2008 Ian Parry Prize, British Ambassador Peter Beckingham announced Wednesday.
Villafranca bested 172 photographers from all over the world for the scholarship prize, awarded in memory of Ian Parry, a British photojournalist who died in 1989 at age 24 while on assignment for the Sunday Times of London during the Romanian revolution.
Villafranca’s winning entry was a portfolio of 12 black-and-white images of gang members of the “Chinese Mafia Crew” living in the Baseco compound in Tondo.
Beckingham said he was delighted to learn that a Filipino was again going to London to accept an award.
He said that last year Villafranca won the “Everyday Islam” photo competition sponsored by the British Embassy and Newsbreak magazine.
Villafranca won the first prize for “School Bound,” his photograph of four schoolgirls in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan, taken soon after the ambush and beheading of Marines there last year.
“VJ is a talented artist, and we knew that in time his work would be recognized by some of the world’s experts in photographic art,” Beckingham said.
The winner of the Ian Parry Award is automatically accepted by the World Press Photo into its final list of nominees for the Joop Swart Master Class in Amsterdam.
The prize is awarded on the basis of both words and pictures. Entrants are required to submit an existing body of work as evidence of their ability to pursue a story, as well as a proposal on the project that they intend to pursue if they win the award.
Villafranca plans to use his prize money of £3,000 ($5,900) to fund a project in Burma.
Villafranca obtained a degree in Fine Arts, major in Advertising Arts, from the University of Santo Tomas. He also studied at the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University.
