World Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organization based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Founded in 1955 the organization is known for holding the world's largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. This year, the winners were selected from more than 90,000 submitted images. In addition to selecting the World Press Photo of the Year, the contest determines winners in several different categories. In the category "Daily Life Stories" Tanya Habjouqa has won the 2nd Prize for her work: Occupied Pleasures: More than four million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where the political situation regularly intrudes upon the most mundane of moments. People’s movements are circumscribed and the threat of violence often hangs overhead. Occupied Pleasures is an exploration of the small moments of pleasure where ordinary men and women demonstrate a desire to live, not just simply survive. Tanya Habjouqa was born in Jordan and educated in the United States, receiving her masters in Global Media and MENA Politics from the University of London SOAS. She is a freelance photographer, features writer, and a founding member of Rawiya photo collective. She is working on personal projects that explore socio-political dynamics, occupation, and subcultures of the Levant. Habjouqa has worked on the front lines in Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and Gaza.
Tanya received an honorable mention for the 2012 FotoVisura grant, the 2011 SND Silver Award for her Gaza story A Life Less Ordinary, the 2007 Clarion Award for coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War for Bloomberg and the 2006 Global Health Council award for humanitarian photography with her Darfur coverage.She is represented by East Wing, an international platform for photography, founded in Doha, Qatar.
