06:34 PM
Wednesday 01 June 2022
Books – Abdullah Owais:
In 2013, photojournalist Islam Farouk was on a date with regular coverage of the armed forces’ security for a facility. The young man took several pictures, before glimpsing a soldier on one of the armored vehicles, while he was reading the Qur’an during the holy month of Ramadan at the time. Two days after its capture, it was published in an Egyptian newspaper. So that the image will be on a date with winning first place in one of the image’s axes, in the competition “The International Prize for the Holy Qur’an .. and the Qur’an chant into chant” in its second edition in 2022, which is organized by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
When Islam published the photo on his page many years ago, it had a great interaction that exceeded 25,000, and it was circulated on different pages, and this did not occupy the photojournalist who was accustomed to such shots, and some of them are considered “sustenance and a reward from God for his efforts.” With the publication of the picture, its spread and circulation on a large scale, the picture reached its hero, Sayed Abdullah, and he was very happy with it.
The image was in the minds of the photojournalist’s friends, and when the competition announced the opening of its door to images that combine daily life and the spirituality of the month of Ramadan, Muhammad Hisham, a friend of Islam, saw the image in his imagination and considered that it had strong chances of winning, according to what Islam said: “When I submitted it I felt that the picture would have a share in the prize, the picture was different, not in a mosque or a house, but rather for a recruit who performs his work in insurance.”
The organization contacted Islam two weeks after his presentation in the competition, and they did not tell him that he was a winner, only that he was a candidate for victory, and he had to attend a virtual meeting through the “Zoom” application, and at that time the young man realized that he would be among the first three places, but he did not imagine that he would get the gold medal. , or first place. During the meeting, Islam was asked to explain the scenes and details of the picture, to inform the committee that Islam was the first place winner, provided that he receives a gold medal and a certificate of honor.
Islam quickly remembered his friend Muhammad Hisham, who also works as a photojournalist, for many years, so he called him and told him about the victory, and he was the first to know about the victory, then his direct manager in the photography department that Islam has been working with for 8 years, the great photojournalist Hossam Diab. Then I had to call my wife, Walaa, who works as a journalist, and she said to me jokingly, since the prize is golden, it will be my go.
Islam says that the award, and any award in photography, is considered a culmination of a previous effort, but it has nothing to do with the strength of the image or not: “I usually do not pay attention to competitions, it does not concern me much, but I never mind participating when I have the opportunity,” attributing his behavior to laziness. Sometimes it may be due to time constraints due to the nature of work.
Islam has been working as a photojournalist since 2011, until now. He previously won several awards, two of them from the Egyptian Press Photographers Division, and the image of the recruiter was a Quran reader, the third award. Islam jokes: “These competitions I only participated in, maybe if I participated in others, I would also win.”
And the beginning of Islam’s work was an assistant director, working in films, but due to the nature of that work, he did not find many job opportunities at the time, when his friend Darren Farghali, who now works as a journalist, told him that there was an opportunity to work as a photojournalist with Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, and indeed he started filming there . After that, Islam returned to directing through the door of change, and then returned again to photojournalism on the “Masrawy” website.
The image section of the competition is organized and supervised by the “World of Photography” group, in which 3 people from different countries are judged, amid hundreds of submissions from several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, the Emirates, Iraq, Turkey, the United States of America, and Egypt, which was the winner of one. her sons.