Tonight, in Amsterdam international DMJX-student Heba Khamis will receive a first, second or third prize at the World Press Photo of the year 2017. Heba Khamis is nominated in the category Contemporary Issuses for her story Banned Beauty, which was her final diploma project made at DMJX in 2016.
It’s only the second time that a DMJX-student project receives a prize at WPP. But what’s more interesting: It’s the first time ever a female Egyptian photographer wins at WPP, the first time an Egyptian wins with a story from outside Egypt and the first time one of our scholarship students receives this honour.
Over the past five years DMJX has been able to support talented photojournalists, who come from countries outside the Western World and who can’t afford to live and study in Denmark. Through scholarships we have given photojournalists from countries like Nepal, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Iran, Armenia, Egypt, Kenya, Argentina the chance to live in Denmark and to study at our world-renowned photojournalism programmes. Heba Khamis has been one of these students.
This has now come to an end.
Due to cut backs from the Danish Government, the Ministry of Education will no longer fund the scholarships for international students. Scholarships that has helped especially women photographers from the Arab world to study photojournalism and has focussed on educating independent and critical photojournalists in countries, where this type of education can be difficult.
This is a sad development – not only for the photojournalists, who will not be able to study journalism in Denmark, but also for our Danish BA-education, which will suffer from the lack of pluralism and the inspiration that come from students outside the Western World.
Both our international photojournalism programmes will continue, but the participants will either have to be exchange students or paying students. We will also continue to work for the possibility to have scholarship students again.
Tonight, we’ll cross our fingers for Heba Khamis and celebrate her and the other winners at World Press Photo.