The 1998 Alexia Competition will award $22,000 in scholarships and grants to five students who demonstrate excellence in their ability to conceive concise, focused, and meaningful documentary projects and execute them at a high level.
The Alexia Competition was created by the family of Alexia Tsairis, a Syracuse University photojournalism student who was a victim of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Since 1991, the Alexia Competition has awarded over $85,000 in scholarships and grants to 35 Alexia Scholars. Winners have come from the US, Germany and China and have gone on to claim such awards as the Hearst Photojournalism Championship, College Photographer of the Year and Newspaper Photographer of the Year.
The top prize in the student competition is a $7,000 scholarship toward a semester in the Syracuse University London Photography program and a $1,000 grant toward completing the picture story proposed in the winning entry. Second place scholarship and grant will total $5,500 and three "Awards of Special Recognition" of $1500 include a $500 grant for producing the proposed picture story and a $1000 scholarship from the Syracuse University Division of International Programs Abroad to attend the London program. Students enrolled in the London program will have the opportunity to study under the tutelage of freelance photographer Ed Kashi (see his pictures in National Geographic Magazines for August and September, 1997) who will be teaching the course in the Fall of 1998.
Scheduled judges for the 1998 competition are Robert E. Gilka, former director of photography for National Geographic; Ed Kashi, freelance photojournalist for National Geographic; Bob Lynn, former AME for Graphics at the Virginian-Pilot and Kathy Ryan, picture editor for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Entries for the Alexia Competition must be postmarked by February 1, 1998.
Complete rules and competition information will be published in the December issue of the NPPA's NewsPhotographer Magazine and can be found at the Alexia Foundation website at http://newhouse.syr.edu/alexia
For more information, contact The Alexia Foundation via e-mail (ALEXIAFOTO@AOL.com) or write:
Alexia Competition Newhouse School of Public Communications 215 University Place Syracuse NY 13244-2100
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