The Indonesian Photojournalists Association (PFI) has honored the country’s best journalistic photos of 2016 through its Indonesian Photojournalist Awards (APFI) 2017 program, with the 35 best works selected out of 5,488 photos from 410 journalists and 127 citizen journalism entries.

The thousands of pictures received throughout last year were assessed by the jury chaired by Oscar Motuloh, with Adek Berry, Agus Susanto, Beawiharta, Kemal Jufri, Hariyanto, Rasdian A. Vadin and Eddy Hasby as members, considering the photos’ concepts, subject matter, quality and esthetics.

“The photojournalism awards have been granted by the PFI since 2009 to encourage photojournalists to keep producing pictures that can ‘speak,’ recording moments of the life and metamorphosis of the nation with honesty. We’ve also awarded citizen journalism works in the hope of promoting public interest to actively participate in reporting daily events through the camera lens,” APFI 2017 executive chairman Agung Rajasa said.

This year’s APFI awards went to nine single and photo-story categories, which were General News, Daily Life, Environment and Nature, Sports, Spot News, People in News, Photo Essay, Art and Entertainment and Citizen Journalism. The APFI also added the category of Best Multimedia works for photo journalists who were capable of utilizing the advancement of modernday technology.

The Photo of the Year award went to Jessica Helena Wuysang from the Antara National News Agency with her Selamatkan Merah Putih (Save the National Flag), snapping two residents saving the Red-and-White against the background of the burning remnants of the Gafatar group’s settlement in Kalimantan. Meanwhile, Bedu Saini from the
Serambi Indonesia daily newspaper received The Life-Time Achievement award for his great contribution to documenting the early phases of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Aceh in 2004.