We are delighted to announce Rebecca Conway as the winner of the sixth Rebecca Vassie Memorial Award for her proposal ‘Torn Water’, a project exploring the long-term psychological impact of civil conflict in South Asia.
The ￡2,000 bursary will support British-born Conway, who has been living and working as a photographer in South Asia since 2015, to document the aftermath of violence, and how conflict-induced depression and PTSD impact communities as they attempt to rebuild, especially where stigma and a lack of mental health services leads to reliance on faith, shrines and spiritual healers.
The Rebecca Vassie Memorial Award was set up in memory of the British photojournalist Rebecca Vassie, who died suddenly in March 2015, aged 30, while on assignment in a refugee camp in Uganda; this sixth award marks the tenth anniversary of Rebecca Vassie’s death. Each award supports an early-to-mid career professional photographer, funding a narrative photography project that focuses on underreported human stories with a social or political context. Award winners also receive mentorship from industry professionals including a portfolio review with Karen Harvey MBE of Shutterhub.
Conway, who intends to produce a book from the resulting photo set, settled in Pakistan after following the Silk Route in her early 20s. She has worked extensively as a photojournalist in regions across South Asia including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, focusing on stories of conflict, environment and minority communities. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Sunday Times, among others.
Image by Rebecca Conway from her series ‘Kashmir Social’: The grandson of Kashmiri human rights activist Parveena Anghar stands under an image of his uncle Javed, Parveena’s son, who disappeared in 1997, at their home in Srinagar on August 4, 2019. The following morning, tourists and foreign journalists were escorted from the Kashmir Valley as the Indian government announced they were stripping Jammu and Kashmir of their semi-autonomous status. Foreign journalists have been banned from reporting from Indian-administered Kashmir since.
Judges for this year’s award included Caroline Hunter (Picture Editor, Guardian Saturday Magazine), Emma Lynch (Picture Editor and Photographer, BBC News Online), critic and curator Jennifer Thatcher (who taught Rebecca Vassie at UCA Rochester), Rebecca Vassie’s friend and colleague Catherine Byaruhanga (BBC News), friend and university classmate Ben Bird (photographer and teacher), and Rebecca Vassie’s mother Janet Vassie.
The judges were impressed by Conway’s strong connection with, and commitment to, her chosen region, and the values and integrity underpinning her work. Janet Vassie, Rebecca’s mother and one of the judges, said: “Rebecca’s dedication and commitment is a testament to the extraordinary impact of her work and she so deserves this award.”
Rebecca Conway said: “I was deeply honoured to receive the call from Janet Vassie confirming I was recipient of this year’s award, particularly given the breadth of experience among the jury, and I’m thrilled to be able to continue to focus on the effect living amid conflict has had on on the mental health of communities in South Asia. Between 2015-2019, I documented civilian trauma in the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley, one of the most militarised regions on the planet and where almost half the population suffers some form of trauma or depression. This project now underpins wider work documenting civilian trauma following civil conflict across South Asia.”
Image by Rebecca Conway from her series ‘Kashmir Social’: Kashmiri mourners offer prayers during the funeral of Rasiq Ahmed Khan, who was found shot dead in Watchohallan village in Shopian, south Kashmir, some 80 kms from Srinagar, on December 14, 2015. Raisq, who was around 22, was found shot to death by gunmen who local residents report were members of the Indian police Special Operations Group.
Two further applicants were Highly Commended: Richard Gosnold and Kat Wood. Wood’s proposal ‘A place beyond the fields’ seeks to document women farmers in the North of England who have diversified into non-agricultural part-time jobs to sustain their land, highlighting the shifting realities and financial precariousness of modern farming. Meanwhile, in ‘Apostate’, Richard Gosnold sets out to explore the personal impact and aftermath for people leaving high-control religions, working with the charity Faith to Faithless across the UK and Ireland and celebrating individual resilience. Wood and Gosnold both receive ￡300 seed funding towards their projects.
Also shortlisted from a record 145 applications were Bethany Hobbs, Kadi Jatta and Leia Morrison. A total of fifteen longlisted applicants gain access to the Trust’s Development Network, which disburses small grants towards education, training and practice development.
The first Rebecca Vassie Memorial Award was won in 2017 by James Arthur Allen, who documented the Circassians, a little-known Islamic community in Israel. Four images from his collection were shortlisted for the 161st edition of the Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition. The 2018 Award funded Kirsty Mackay’s project ‘The Fish That Never Swam’, investigating the relationship between health and social housing in Glasgow; six images from this collection have been acquired for the national collection of National Galleries Scotland. For the 2019 Award, photographer Chrystal Ding travelled to Rwanda to document the therapeutic process for young survivors of the 1994 genocide. Her resulting set, ‘Yours is Going to Be Healed As Well’, was published by the BBC. Laura Page, who won in 2020, created ‘The Hidden Depths’, portraits and stories of older Britons which subvert ageist stereotypes and shine fresh light on later life. The work has been showcased on the BBC and exhibited in Sheffield. The fifth Award in 2022 was won by Jamie Sinclair for his project ‘Hjem’, which saw Sinclair return to his hometown of Ashington, Northumberland, where a significant number of refugees have been housed, to explore the lives and impact of refugees in English towns. The resulting work has featured at London’s outernet and on WeTransfer. A film of his work has screened at Photobook Cafe in London.