Carrie Hasselback’s image of a junkyard in Afghanistan was the winning photo of NYU’s International Education Forum photo contest, which was held in recognition of International Education Week (Nov. 14-18).
New York University’s International Education Forum, a graduate student group in the International Education Program at the Steinhardt School of Education, named Carrie Hasselback, a master’s candidate in NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, the winner of its photo contest, which raised funds for Operation Smile. The organization provides free reconstructive surgery for children around the globe. The theme was “Youth Around the World: Making Changes One Step at a Time.”
The contest, part of International Education Week (Nov. 14-18), drew more than 150 entries and, with a $2 fee for each entry, raised nearly $400 for Operation Smile. The photographs were judged by Linda Levinson, a visiting faculty member in the Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Photography and Imaging.
Hasselback received a $50 gift certificate to the NYU Bookstore for her winning entry.
Hasselback’s photo was shot on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, where Hasselback had been living this summer. The image is of children in a junkyard full of remnants of warsdowned planes, helicopters, and tanks.
“These boys were dragging us all over the junkyard, which was obviously their playground,” explained Hasselback. “They would take us to the things they thought were the coolest and do tricks for uslike jumping off the wing of a crashed airplane. To the boys it was only natural to be surrounded by shot-down planes and abandoned tanks. They were children of war who were able to make this their playground and didn’t know things like swings and monkey bars even exist in this world.”