Aadhyaa Aravind Shankar, a seven-year-old girl, won Global Peace Photo Award for capturing a photo of her mother peacefully falling asleep on her grandmother’s lap sitting on the floor surrounded by a few house plants right by their side.
The photo was clicked using Aadhyaa’s mother’s phone camera, captioned ‘Lap of Peace’. For this photo, Aadhyaa was awarded 1000 Euros at the Austrian Parliament, Vienna, on UN International Peace Day among 16,500 submissions across the globe.
The Global Peace Photo Award, which is inspired by Nobel Peace Laureates 1911 Alfred Fried and Tobias Asser, celebrates the capability of humans to be caring and supportive and all kinds of pacifism and disarmament of individuals and society as a whole.
The award recognises and promotes photographers across the world whose pictures capture human efforts towards a peaceful world and the quest for beauty and goodness in human lives. The award is presented to those photographers who best express the idea that our future lies in peaceful coexistence.
Organised by Edition Lammerhuber in collaboration with Photographische Gesellschaft (PHG), UNESCO, the Austrian Parliament, the Austrian Parliamentary Reporting Association, the International Press Institute (IPI), the German Youth Photography Award and the World Press Photo Foundation.
The second-grader of Vidyaniketan in Hebbal, Bangalore, is the first Indian and youngest person to receive this award.
The prize was presented by Gerhard Lahner, COO Vienna Insurance Group and Barbara Grotschnig, Head of Sponsoring Vienna Insurance Group.
As reported by NRI Pulse, Aadhyaa has been a photography buff since the age of four. She said her favourite camera is her mother Roshni’s cellphone to click whatever grabs her attention.
Aadhyaa’s father, Aravind, a software professional, sent in her captured picture to the contest.
Aadhyaa took her mother’s photo resting on her grandmother’s lap in colour but transferred into a black and white photograph and cropped it to highlight her message.
