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Introducing Martin Bandzak, the winner of the main prize Czech Press Photo 2010

Martin Bandzak was born in Bratislava in 1975. He spent his childhood in Zambia where his parents worked as doctors.  He studied at the Sports School in Bratislava. He didn’t finish his journalism studies – he preferred photography. In his photographic projects he focuses on people living on the edge of society and in crises situations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2001, he cofounded humanitarian organisation MAGNA CHILDREN AT RISK, where he is the director.  The organisation provides medical and nutritional help to people and their families in Congo, Cambodia, Burma, Haiti, Kenya, Sudan, India, Nicaragua and others. Since 2002, Martin Bandzak has lived alternately in Phnom Penh and Bratislava with his wife and child.
He won his first Czech Press Photo award in 2003 – Honorable Mention for his reportage AIDS in Cambodia. In 2010 the International Jury of Czech Press Photo awarded him the main prize Photograph of the Year for his picture of a young girl injured in the Haiti earthquake. In 2008 he published a photographic book about Cambodia called Lost Lives, which captures the suffering of the Cambodians between 2002 and 2008 when the AIDS epidemics broke out. The book is accompanied by multimedia travelling exhibition. Martin Bandzak is the initiator of the monothematic magazine INSIDE which through big reportages, essays, interviews and comics offers views and opinions and helps to raise awareness and interest in the basic problems of contemporary world.

www.bandzak.com, www.magnadetivtisni.cz, www.inside-magazine.org

International Jury statement:

“We awarded this year’s Czech Press Photo main prize to a portrait of a girl injured during one of this year’s biggest tragedies. The strength of the photograph is in its simplicity. The picture is stunning and has an immediate impact. It is laconic and iconic at the same time. It shows the pain of an innocent victim of a natural disaster. Its emotionality doesn’t allow us to forget not only the tragedy itself but all the drama that followed as well; and the people who are still suffering.”

The story of the winning photograph

“ The photograph of the small girl was taken in Haiti three weeks after the earthquake. I went to Haiti with a team of doctors from the humanitarian organisation MAGNA CHILDREN IN NEED to document the aftermath of the natural disaster. I saw the girl in the local Haitian Community Hospital in Port-au-Prince. She sat quietly on the bed in the corner of a small hospital room. The room was very narrow and dark; there was only a little light coming through the narrow opening of the door. I went inside and sat opposite her. The girl was staring into distance. I had a feeling that she didn’t notice me. In contrast to the chaos in the hospital, here it was strangely quiet. After a while the girl looked at me and didn’t waver even when I started taking pictures of her. I was afraid that I was going to disturb her with my clicking but she kept looking into my eyes without moving. There was a commotion in the corridors; the hospital staff was rushing around as they were bringing in more patients. She didn’t move; she just kept looking at me. Her lips didn’t move, she didn’t make a sound. It was as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t. The expression on her face said everything. I took a few pictures and we looked at each other again, in silence. Suddenly I felt that for a moment I had became a part of her tragic story. I slowly got up and left. When I came back the next day, she wasn’t there. I don’t know her name, I don’t know where she went, I don’t know whether she lost her parents in the earthquake; I only know that I shall never forget her unwavering look.
I took the photograph with the Canon 5D, 24mm lens. As with all my pictures, I immediately converted it to black and white.”

Martin Bandzak