It’s hard to remember, but when Covid first struck, many hoped the crisis would be short-lived. Officials at the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the Omidyar Network worried that poignant stories of essential workers braving the virus and everyday people struggling to survive economic dislocation could be lost over time.
That fear sparked Covid-19: the Bigger Picture, a competition the grant makers created that invited people across the globe to submit photographs that document the human impact of the pandemic.
“Words alone really cannot capture the anguish and the suffering people around the world have endured,” says Beth Kanter, chief advocacy and strategic communications officer at the Omidyar Network.
The competition attracted more than 500 entries from four continents and 91 countries.
Many of the photographs are sobering. In “Rest in Peace,” one of the three winners, shown here, health care workers in the Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram perform last rituals following Hindu tradition before cremating the remains of a man who died of Covid-19. Normally, family members perform the rituals, but that wasn’t possible because of the danger posed by the disease. The image was taken by Rakesh Nair, of the Times of India.
Winners received a series of photojournalism master classes and the opportunity to work with the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s news team on a story that will be shared through its global distribution network.
Read more, here.
