2010 Pictures of the Year International
Exhibit
Jun 26, 2010 - Oct 10, 2010

2010 Pictures of the Year International (POYi) presented the very best documentary photography of 2009 from winning photojournalists and visual editors in Pictures of the Year International (POYi), the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism competition in the world.

These print and digital photographs reflected the important events and issues that shaped our world in 2009 — a year filled with renewed political engagement in the United States and political defiance in Iran; a year of lingering economic failures and the protracted toll of war.

Images were chosen from more than 45,000 entries submitted by photographers all over the world. Additional POYi honors recognized the year’s top journalistic photographers, as well as exceptional long-term documentary work via the World Understanding, Global Vision and Community Awareness awards.

2010 POYi was a testament to the power of photography and its impact on humanity. These images combined to create a visual representation of the challenges of modern civilization, with themes such as human conflict and interaction, our relationship with the environment, how we appraise our economic status and the range of human emotions from intense joy to sorrow.

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Featured Photographs

  • Seven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong prepares for his comeback to competitive cycling on a training ride in Austin, Texas, September 6, 2008.
    Photo by: Elizabeth Kreutz
  • Lance Armstrong’s legs look ready to race before the start of the Tour de France in Monaco, July 3, 2009. After a four-year hiatus, the 37-year-old announced his return to competitive cycling in September 2008. Armstrong rode into Paris in third place.
    Photo by: Elizabeth Kreutz
  • Tree seedlings grow in rocky ground recently planted for reclamation on a mountaintop removal site in eastern Kentucky. Because the rich topsoil has been scraped off during mining, it’s often difficult for native trees to survive on reclaimed sites. Complete reforestation is rare, and many mountaintops end up grassy pastures.
    The Human Toll: Mountaintop Removal Mining in Appalachia
    Photo by: Katie Falkenberg
  • Coal miners and wives guard the entrance to a Massey Energy mountaintop mine, shouting at protesters who had marched there to demand a stop to mountaintop removal mining. Nearly 2,000 miles of streams have been contaminated or buried and more than a million acres of forest have been destroyed across Appalachia due to mountaintop coal mining. Each week, four million pounds of explosives are used in the region for mountaintop removal, the equivalent of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Coal proponents argue that America needs mountaintop mining to keep the lights on, and West Virginia needs it for the jobs.
    Photo by: Katie Falkenberg
  • Jeffrey Martin, 18, at the 2009 National Rainbow Gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. Every summer, hundreds of vagabond young people attend the Rainbow Gathering, an annual festival held during the first week in July in a different U.S. National Forest. Many of the youth, who are known at gatherings as “The Dirty Kids,” travel around the country during the rest of the year.
    Photo by: Kitra Cahana
  • Arianna Desjardin, 19, at the 2009 National Rainbow Gathering in the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. Held every summer in a different national forest, the Rainbow Gathering is a haven for train hoppers, hobos and teenage runaways. Thirty-seven gatherings have taken place since the first event in Colorado in 1972, and as many as 30,000 people attend each year.
    Photo by: Kitra Cahana
  • Third grader Devin Bryson, 8, and kindergartener Elizabeth Bryson, 6, both students at Matusuyama Elementary School, shout in support of teachers at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, on Friday March 13, 2009. Public school teachers gathered outside the Capitol—after school hours—to protest the estimated 25,000 preliminary layoffs of teachers, librarians and other staff statewide due to cuts in education funding. Many demonstrators dressed in pink to call attention to the pink slips. The California Teachers Association blasted the unusually high number of cuts as school districts tinkered with their budgets in hopes of limiting layoffs.
    Photo by: Renée C. Byer
  • Pham Van Diep, 12, right, and his brother, Pham Van Duc, 10. The boys live near Da Nang, Vietnam, an area heavily sprayed with defoliants during the Vietnam War, and both have undergone numerous medical procedures to correct ailments doctors attribute to dioxin contamination. The places in Vietnam that were heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, an herbicide that contains dioxins, have a birth defect rate of 2.4 percent, significantly higher than the national average of 0.6 percent. Diep says his friends all think his scars are the result of a fight. He doesn’t correct them.
    Photo by: Adam Nadel
  • A boy on the way back from cutting the grass in Sa Pao, Cambodia. The yearly monsoon rains provide much needed respite from the tropical heat and bring life-sustaining water for crops and livestock. But standing water left behind also provides a breeding ground for malaria-bearing mosquitoes. As a result, in the humid aftermath of the monsoon, infection and mortality rates increase. Paradoxically, intense rain adversely affects mosquito reproduction by disturbing the standing water enough to lower hatching rates. Populations can increase, however, when the rain lessens.
    Photo by: Adam Nadel
  • Nambassa Miriyamge, Uganda. Miriyamge’s three-year-old daughter died of malaria. “It was a very sad time, a bad time for the entire family,” she recalls. “We are still deeply affected by her death, and I truly fear this disease.” As many as 2.5 million people die from malaria each year, leaving an inescapable legacy of guilt and sorrow.
    Photo by: Adam Nadel
  • These mosquitoes are being used to create a malaria vaccine thought to be the Holy Grail of malaria control. Mosquitoes kill more people than any other insect or animal. By transmitting malaria from human to human, mosquitoes are responsible for as many as 2.5 million deaths a year. Nearly half the world’s population lives under the threat of contracting malaria. The parasite prays on the most vulnerable of society: at least 700,000 children under 5 years of age will die this year. The disease takes an economic toll, too. Malaria costs Africa an estimated 12 billion dollars annually in lost productivity.
    Photo by: Adam Nadel
  • Jessica Alvarado fixes her Quinceañera dress on a blood-stained sidewalk next to a memorial honoring tamale vendor Cosme Gonzaleza, who was robbed and killed in front of her Los Angeles home.
    Coming of Age
    Photo by: Barbara Davidson
  • Thomasina Nez, 35, gives Bobbi, 4, a bath in a tin basin in their dilapidated trailer on a Navajo reservation in Cameron, Arizona. Without running water, Nez must bathe her children in water hauled from 30 miles away and heated on the family’s wood stove. The Bennett Freeze ban, lifted officially in March 2009, prohibited some 8,000 Navajos living on 1.5-million acres of disputed land in Arizona from erecting or repairing their homes, including putting in water lines, unless approved by the neighboring Hopi. Consequently, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs says 77 percent of the homes in the area aren’t suitable to live in.
    Frozen Land, Forgotten People
    Photo by: Barbara Davidson
  • A torn American flag flies over a cemetery in Tuba, Arizona, where Thomasina Nez’s former partner and father to five of her children is buried. The Bennett Freeze ban, instituted in 1966, prohibited home and property improvements on land in Arizona that was disputed by the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The law left 1.5-million acres frozen in bureaucracy until it was reversed in March 2009.
    Frozen Land, Forgotten People
    Photo by: Barbara Davidson
  • Low-water levels in a reservoir above Nurek Dam in Tajikistan. The water that nourishes the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia comes from melting glaciers and snow in the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. During Soviet times, decisions about how to share resources were made by the central government in Moscow. Since becoming independent in 1991, the nations now argue about how the area’s dams should be used. Countries downstream want water to be stored in reservoirs during the winter and released for irrigation in the summer. Upstream countries want to use the water in winter to generate electricity.
    Photo by: Carolyn Drake
  • School children pick cotton in Zhetisay, Kazakhstan. The area was sparsely populated before the Soviet government began building towns in order to launch its massive cotton industry, which now spans all the countries in Central Asia. Water funneled from the Syr Darya river to irrigate the fields is one of the reasons for the Aral Sea’s depletion.
    Photo by: Carolyn Drake
  • In the Tajik village of Akjar, the irrigation canal is the only source of water. Plumbing shut down after the Soviet Union collapsed, so the village relies on dirty water for survival.
    Photo by: Carolyn Drake
  • Photo by: Paul Hansen
  • Felix meets his new little sister, Emma Richardson, on February 26, 2009. He has helped his mother choose her first outfit: cowboy pajamas. Felix, like his older brother Mathias, has a genetic disease that progressively destroys the brain. Mathias is now deaf and paralyzed and cannot speak. While Felix shows no outward signs of the disease yet, one hope for his survival is Emma, who his parents selected to have the exact right genes. Stem cells taken from the umbilical cord at the time Emma’s birth may save Felix if the disease breaks out.
    Photo by: Paul Hansen
  • A hotel staff member polishes benches under a picture of Chairman Mao Zedong on November 3, 2009 in Nanjie village, Henan province, China. Nanjie is a model collective village run along Maoist lines. Residents live in identical apartments and receive free health care and education, but earn only a token salary, paid in coupons rather than currency. The government-supported Red Tourism program glorifies the deeds of past communist leaders through monuments, battle reenactments and tours of model communist villages like Nanjie. Hardly a reference can be found to the millions killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • A candidate takes the oral test to become a tour leader at the Yangjialing Assembly Hall in Yan’an, China, on November 8, 2009. In 1945, the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held here, naming Mao Zedong the undisputed leader and enshrining Mao Zedong Thought into the Party Constitution.
    Red Tourism
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • A young Moldovan girl burns a portrait of Vladimir Lenin that rioters had taken from the parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Thousands of demonstrators had ransacked the building to protest what they said was a fraudulent victory by the governing Communist Party in the general election on April 5.
    Moldova's Tainted Elections
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • Papers fall out of the windows of the parliament building as rioters ransack the inside in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Demonstrators had stormed the building to protest the victory of the governing Communist Party in the general election two days earlier. Opposition leaders accused the Communists of rigging the elections and demanded a recount. More than 30 people were injured in the protests and three demonstrators died in police custody under mysterious circumstances. The poorest country in Europe, Moldova is the only former Soviet state to vote the Communist Party back in power through democratic elections.
    Moldova's Tainted Elections
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • Days after the devastating earthquake that killed thousands of people in this valley town of Beichuan, Sichuan Province, China, rescuers were still searching for survivors and collecting bodies.
    Photo by: David Butow
  • A man lays on the ground after being attacked by Kenyan police during clashes in the Kibera slums on January 17, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya. Some 600 people have been killed in severe post-election violence amid allegations that the incumbent president manipulated the December elections.
    Photo by: Uriel Sinai
  • Eric Lipps, 52, waits in line to enter the NYCHires Job Fair in New York on December 9, 2009. U.S. employers cut 85,000 jobs in December, confounding expectations that the labor market was finally stabilizing and piling pressure on President Barack Obama to spur job growth.
    Photo by: Shannon Stapleton
  • President-elect Barack Obama looks out over the crowd of thousands gathered at Grant Park in Chicago on November 4, 2008.
    Photo by: David Guttenfelder
  • Erica and Rully Urias of Island Creek, Kentucky, bathe their daughter, Makayla, 5, in water containing high levels of arsenic. The family attributes the contamination primarily to the runoff from the mountaintop mines surrounding their home as well as the blasting, which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into the water. The coal company that mines the nearby land has never admitted to causing the problem, but they supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking.
    The Human Toll: Mountaintop Removal Mining in Appalachia
    Photo by: Katie Falkenberg
  • Vibe and her father Michael enjoy a playful moment in the bathroom at their home in Hundested, Denmark.
    Photo by: Thomas Lekfeldt

Stories Behind the Photographs

  • Miriyamge’s three-year-old daughter died of malaria. It was a very sad time, a bad time for the entire family, she recalls.
    Adam Nadel

    Adam Nadel

    View profile

Featured Photographers

 
  • Carolyn Drake

    Carolyn Drake

    Photographer Carolyn Drake lived in Istanbul between 2007 and 2012, while pursuing documentary projects in Central Asia.

  • Marcus Bleasdale

    Marcus Bleasdale

    Marcus Bleasdale is a British photojournalist who uses his work to influence policy makers around the world.

  • Tomas van Houtryve

    Tomas van Houtryve

    In 2006 Tomas Van Houtryve was named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers.

  • Adam Nadel

    Adam Nadel

    Adam Nadel is an American photographer based in New York City.

  • Ryan Henriksen

    Ryan Henriksen

    Ryan Henriksen is the Multimedia Specialist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

  • Paul Hansen

    Paul Hansen

    Paul Hansen is a photojournalist based in Stockholm, Sweden.

  • Barbara Davidson

    Barbara Davidson

    Barbara Davidson has been a staff photographer for The Los Angeles Times since 2007.

  • Jassim Ahmad

    Jassim Ahmad

    Jassim Ahmad joined Reuters in 2000 and works in its Media division as Global Head of Multimedia & Interactive Innovation, with responsibility for developing high-impact visual storytelling.

  • Not pictured

    Ayperi Ecer

    Ayperi Karabuda Ecer is a documentary photography editor and strategist, former global vice president of pictures at Reuters, editor-in-chief at Magnum Photos Paris, and bureau chief at SIPA New York.

Iris Nights Presenters

 
  • Stanley Greene

    Stanley Greene

    Photographer Stanley Greene was born in New York in 1949.

  • Katie Falkenberg

    Katie Falkenberg

    Katie Falkenberg has spent the last five years documenting pressing social issues in the United States and abroad.

  • Elizabeth Kreutz

    Elizabeth Kreutz

    Elizabeth Kreutz is an independent photojournalist specializing in documentary sports photography.

  • Francine Orr

    Francine Orr

    Growing up in Colorado, Francine Orr was profoundly affected by images of the American civil rights movement, which led her to study history and art at the University of Saint Mary, in Leavenworth, Kansas.

  • Kate Orne

    Kate Orne

    Aside from her fashion photography, Kate Orne has focused on equality issues in Pakistan.

  • Rick Loomis

    Rick Loomis

    Rick Loomis won the Pulitzer Prize for his yearlong project documenting the ills of the world’s oceans.

  • David Butow

    David Butow

    California-based photojournalist David Butow first visited China in 1986 and has since returned a dozen times, developing a fascination with the rapid modernization and the resulting changes in society.

  • Brian L. Frank

    Brian L. Frank

    A San Francisco native, Brian L. Frank studied photojournalism at San Francisco State University.

  • Ami Vitale

    Ami Vitale

    Ami Vitale’s journey as a photographer and filmmaker has taken her to more than 85 countries where she has witnessed civil unrest and violence, but also surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit.

  • Renée C. Byer

    Renée C. Byer

    Renée C. Byer is an American photojournalist and multimedia field producer for the Sacramento Bee.

  • Kitra Cahana

    Kitra Cahana

    Kitra Cahana is an American-born photographer who grew up in both Montreal, Canada and Gothenburg, Sweden.

Slideshow Night Photographers

 
  • Alejandro Cartagena

    Alejandro Cartagena

    Alejandro Cartagena has been named on of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers. His work has been exhibited and published internationally and is in several public and private collections in Mexico, USA, Brazil and Italy.

  • Not pictured

    Alessandra Quadri

    Alessandra Quadri was born in Padua, Italy, in 1980 and is currently based in Rome.

  • Not pictured

    Amy Lyne

    Amy Lyne is a freelance documentary photographer whose work focuses on humanitarian and social issues that tend to be overshadowed by the headline news.

  • Brijesh Patel

    Brijesh Patel

    Born in India, raised in London, Brijesh Patel combines the world of documentary and fine art to create self-initiated projects about India.

  • Cathy Greenblat

    Cathy Greenblat

    In 2002, Cathy Greenblat made photography a central element of her professional and personal work, choosing to retire early from Rutgers to pursue her photographic interests and projects.

  • Claire Martin

    Claire Martin

    Claire Martin began her career by pursuing a degree in Social Work, however, she changed her focus to photography when she realised that change can also be effected through this medium.

  • Danny Wilcox Frazier

    Danny Wilcox Frazier

    Photographer and filmmaker, Danny Wilcox Frazier, concentrates on covering issues of marginalized communities both in and outside the United States.

  • Not pictured

    David Taylor

    David Taylor has been photographing along the U.S.-Mexico border between El Paso/Juarez and Tijuana/San Diego over the last four years.

  • Eric Lusito

    Eric Lusito

    Eric Lusito is a French self taught photographer, born in 1976 in Aosta, Italy, lives in Chamonix Mont-Blanc.

  • Not pictured

    Guillermo Arias

    Guillermo Arias started as a free-lance photojournalist in 1993 in Tepic, Mexico.

  • Not pictured

    Hector Mediavilla

    Hector Mediavilla is a Spanish documentary photographer mainly interested in the human being and his understanding of life.

  • Not pictured

    Henry Jacobson

    Henry Jacobson is a photographer and filmmaker.

  • Jason Reblando

    Jason Reblando

    Jason Reblando is a freelance photographer based in Chicago.

  • Jerry Redfern

    Jerry Redfern

    Photojournalist Jerry Redfern has specialized in stories from the Southeast Asia for the last dozen years.

  • Not pictured

    John Tully

    John Tully graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in May 2008.

  • Karen Quincy Loberg

    Karen Quincy Loberg

    Karen Quincy Loberg has been a staff photographer for the Ventura County Star for 10 years.

  • Mark Edward Harris

    Mark Edward Harris

    Mark Edward Harris started his professional photography career doing the stills for the Merv Griffin Show and various television and movie companies.

  • Munem Wasif

    Munem Wasif

    Munem Wasif prefers to photograph his known people, therefore his country Bangladesh, just to start from the inside of a story.

  • Nadia Benchallal

    Nadia Benchallal

    Nadia Benchallal is an award-winning Franco-Algerian photographer.

  • Peter DiCampo

    Peter DiCampo

    Peter DiCampo is a documentary photographer whose goal is to contribute his work to a dialogue on international development.

  • Not pictured

    Philip Scott Andrews

    Philip Scott Andrews is a freelance photographer and filmmaker based in Chicago in the Midwestern United States.

  • Not pictured

    Ray Ramos

    Venice, CA. native, Ray Ramos has been part of the Aesthetics group exhibits at the Perfect Exposure Gallery in Los Angeles.

  • Not pictured

    Tom Leininger

    Tom Leininger is a Texas based photographer and educator.

  • Toni Greaves

    Toni Greaves

    Toni Greaves is a documentary, commercial and editorial photographer based in Portland and working worldwide.

  • Yvette Marie Dostatni

    Yvette Marie Dostatni

    Yvette Maria Dostatni is in the process of photgraphing conventions.

Exhibit Themes

 
  • Ecologies and Economies

    Ecologies and Economies

    Worldwide efforts to reduce pollution and conserve natural resources were counterbalanced by the desire to stimulate economic growth.
  • Reflecting the Human Experience

    Reflecting the Human Experience

    The photographer's lens is a mirror that captures a reflection of daily life, from the confident carriage of a six-year-old enrolled in an afterschool program to the private lives of a polygamous sect.
  • The Globe

    The Globe

    Each year, photographers around the world document the stories, personalities, and places that capture our interest and demand our attention. In 2009, the international stage was set with stories of political unrest, environmental decline and human conflict.
  • The U.S.

    The U.S.

    The inaugural year of Barack Obama's presidency was marked by two challenges of historical proportion: concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an enduring economic crisis that was characterized by increasing numbers of home foreclosures and unemployment.

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