World.Report Award 2016 – Short Story Award

Award motivations

“Waiting Girls” represents an extraordinary union of strength of a story with high journalistic value and photographic quality of superior level.
The photographer, describing a world of female segregation in Iranian jails, has created documentary evidence of the highest civic value, confronting a very “inconvenient” theme and entering a context which is difficult to reveal.
Nevertheless, he did it with delicacy and respect toward the portrayed subjects, respecting their dignity. Through his photographic style, he gives us moments of intimacy and poetry.
The narrative, as presented, is remarkably deep and it gives, without interruption, a sensation of suspension of the lives of the people photographed.

Waiting for the capital punishment.

In Iran, death penalty is given to the children for the crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, and armed robbery. According to the Islamic Penal Law, the age when girls can be held accountable for their crimes is 9 years old, while the international conventions have banned the death penalty for individuals under 18.

 

Pursuant to the passing of new laws in the recent years, the Iranian Judiciary System detains children in Juvenile Delinquents Correction Centre after their verdict. Those with minor crimes are freed after spending their term and those who are sentenced to death are hanged after reaching 18 if the next of kin (private complainants) do not take back their complaints.

The project was made in Shahr-e-ziba district of Tehran and took about  10 days to be completed.

Text by Sadegh Souri