Ansari to confer 'Life Time' awards on four photo journalists

New Delhi, Aug 18 (ANI): Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari will confer 'Life Time Achievement' awards on four eminent photo journalists at a special function at Vigyan Bhavan here on Thursday to commemorate the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Photo Division, a unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Homai Vyarawalla, S. Paul, Benu Sen and K.G. Maheshwari will get the awards, which include a cash prize of Rs.1.50 lakh, a shawl, a memento and a citation.

Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting C.M. Jatua will be present on the occasion.

The first category of awards shall honour two eminent photo journalists. The first being 97-year-old Homai Vyarawalla of Vadodara, popularly known as the First Indian Lady photo-journalist in the country.

Vyarawalla, who is popularly known for her artistic work in the pre and post partition period studied at the J J School of Art. She started her career as a freelancer with the Illustrated Weekly.

Her depiction of political events has remained imprinted in public memory since several decades.

Seventy-nine 79-years-old S. Paul was the Chief Photographer of the Indian Express from 1962 to 1988 and the winner of the maximum photo awards in the country and abroad.

Paul is the first Indian to have been profiled with a portfolio of four pictures by the World's oldest and prestigious The British Journal Of Photography Annual 1967 followed by another portfolio with article in the 1969 edition (U.K).

He is also the first Indian to win the Nikon International Photo Contest in 1971.

In the Pictorialists category, the 'Life Time Achievement' award shall be conferred on 79-years-old Benu Sen of Kolkata. He is the Secretary-General, Federation of Indian Photography and President of Photographic Association of Dum Dum.

He has authored several books on photography, including the famous publication "Art of Photography" published in 1979. The Camera World International, Australia and the Harvard Senetic Museum have adjudged him the best Indian Pictorialist.

The second recipient in the Pictorialist category is 88-year-old K.G. Maheshwari from Mumbai.

Maheswari has been a creative legend in portrait photography. He has participated in various international exhibitions and has won over 400 awards. He was conferred the honour of being an Associate of Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (ARPS) in the year 1946.

The Photographic Society of India conferred its highest honour "The Honorary Life Membership" on him. He has also been conferred with a number of honorary fellowships and is a member of many national and international photographic organizations for his contribution to creative photography. (ANI)