Guatemalan femicide. Image © Walter Astrada.
Argentinian photographer Walter Astrada has won the Single Image category of the BJP’s International Photography Award.

Astrada’s image, which depicts a Guatemalan victim of femicide and which won first prize in the singles category of the World Press Photo Contemporary Issues award in 2007, was unanimously picked out by the judging panel –photographer Simon Norfolk, Magnum London archive director Nick Galvin and Foto8 editor and University of Westminster photography tutor Max Houghton. Astrada wins a Canon 5D and the chance to exhibit a Spectrum Photographic print of the image at the Association of Photographers’ Gallery, East London from 25-29 November.

Astrada went to Guatemala after deciding to shoot a project on violence against women and discovering that the South American country has the second highest rate of women’s murders (femicide) in the world. In 2006 alone the Public Prosecutor’s Office reported over 3000 reported incidences of domestic violence and nearly 600 female murders. In 2007 the Human Right’s Prosecutor’s Office started to record women’s deaths in the country, and it found more than 3000 women were murdered in that yea alone.

In an interview with World Press Photo he commented on the winning image: 'Most of the bodies I take pictures of was the same. Not in the case of Maira. She was not only shot but it was 16 shots. It’s a lot.’
He added: ‘I think it’s very hard to put this picture in a magazine. Pictures of a woman being killed or raped along with, I don’t know, perfume pictures [ads]. It’s very difficult to put these things together.’ This interview can be viewed online here.
After winning the World Press Photo, Astrada returned to Guatemala to shoot more images in the same project. Earlier this year, he travelled to Kenya to shoot post-election violence in the troubled country, and he is currently working in the Congo.
Last year the BJP International Photography Award was won by Mexican photographer Carla Verea, who submitted a series of portraits of gun-wielding Guatemalan bodyguards. In 2006 Charlie Crane picked up the prize for the Welcome to Pyongyang project, which was subsequently published as a book by Chris Boot. In 2005 German photographer Frank Herfort won the prize with a series of images of Russians at rest in public places.
To sign up for email updates on the 2009 contest, mail photographyaward@bjphoto.co.uk.