The 2017 All About Photo Award Winners
©REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman, Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge, Lone activist Ieshia Evans stands her ground while offering her hands for arrest as she is charged by riot police during a protest against police brutality outside the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana, U.S.A. on July 9, 2016. Evans, a 27-year-old Pennsylvania nurse and mother to a young boy, traveled to Baton Rouge to protest the shooting of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-black man and father of five, who was held down by two white police officers and shot at close range by one of the officers. The shooting, captured on cell phone videos, aggravated the unrest that has coursed through the United States for two years over the use of excessive force by police, especially against black men.
Jonathan Bachman, All About Photo Second Place Winner
Yesterday we featured the First Place Winner of the 2017 All About Photo Awards. Today we celebrate the other winners with an eye towards what it takes for a single image to catch the eye of jurors. Each of these images tell powerful stories within a single frame, from meaningful documentary images, to poignant portraits, to human stories that show us the world in new ways.
©Sumaya Agha, Crossing Serbia. After crossing the Macedonian-Serbian border, refugees walk the unofficial refugee route in subfreezing snowy weather. According to UNHCR, 67,415 refugees landed in Greece in January 2016 alone, most of who traveled the route through Serbia on their way to Western Europe, seeking safety and some sense of normalcy in the absence of peace. The number of refugees arriving in Greece has dropped significantly since the Balkan borders were closed to refugees in March 2016. Produced on assignment for Mercy Corps. Near Miratovac, Serbia, January, 2016.
Sumaya Agha, All About Photo Third Place Winner
©Chad Cowan, The Chase, A violent tornado touches down near Dodge City, Kansas on May 24, 2016 as the photographer Chad Cowan races toward it in his Line-X coated SUV. This EF-3 tornado was on the ground for 15 miles and produced a quarter-mile wide damage swath, narrowly missing densely populated Dodge City. In a farmstead outside of the city, two vehicles were mangled and thrown 150 yards and a person taking shelter in a reinforced concrete bunker was injured when this tornado drove a metal pipe through the concrete
Chad Cowan, All About Photo Fourth Place Winner
©Ami Vitale, Who is the Captive, experiencing new cultures. Now it is more than just a passport. It’s a tool for creating awareness and understanding across cultures, communities, and countries; a tool to make sense of our commonalities in the world we share. Nikon Ambassador and National Geographic magazine photographer Ami Vitale has traveled to more than 90 countries, bearing witness not only to violence and conflict, but also to surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit. Throughout the years, Ami has lived in mud huts and war zones, contracted malaria, and donned a panda suit— keeping true to her belief in the importance of “living the story.” In 2009, after shooting a powerful story on the transport and release of one the world’s last white rhinos, Ami shifted her focus to today’s most compelling wildlife and environmental stories.
Ami Vitale, All About Photo Fifth Place Winner
MERIT AWARD WINNERS
©Alain Schroeder, India
©Antonio Aragon Renuncio, Pacayita
©Constanza Hevia H., The Time I Have Left #1
©Deb Achak, The Queue
©Jane Paradise, Ada’s Hands
©Jared Ragland, Michael
©Jennifer Garza-Cuen, Untitled – Ranch Hand, Buffalo, WY
©Jonathan Banks, Liberia Boy with Ball
©Marcel van Balken, Repair
©Marna Clark, Red Towel
©Mattia Vacca, S’ Ardia
©Tanveer Rohan, Grip of Reliance
©Michael Joseph, Molly
©Roman Jacquet Lagreze, Collecting the Laundry
©Szymon Baryiski, Fleeting Death
Posts on Lenscratch may not be reproduced without the permission of the Lenscratch staff and the photographer.
Recommended
-
The 2026 Lenscratch Student Prize Honorable Mention: G. Chevalier FustecAugust 9th, 2026
-
The 2026 Lenscratch Honorable Mention Student Prize Winner: Anton ZdanovichAugust 8th, 2026
-
The 2026 Lenscratch Honorable Mention Student Prize Winner: Anastasia SierraAugust 7th, 2026
-
The 2026 Student Prize Honorable Mention Winner: Luke RosingAugust 6th, 2026
-
The 2026 Lenscratch 3rd Place Student Prize Winner: Diana SosnowskaAugust 5th, 2026
![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](https://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
