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Joe Armao

Biographical Notes from The Walkley Awards website for 2005

Photographic: Sport Photography

Winner Joe Armao, The Age, "Blood Sport"

Joe Armao started his career as a cadet with the Herald & Weekly Times in 1989 and joined The Age in 1995.

His sporting images captured an athlete at the brink in the International Boxing Federation Super Featherweight world title bout between Australian Robbie Peden and American Nate Campbell.

Rattled when he had his nose bloodied in the second round, Campbell then received a cut above his right eye in the fourth. The Australian picked him off with combinations at will, and the fight was stopped in the eighth round. Peden walked away the victor. He now holds the same belt that Australian legends Barry Michael and Lester Ellis held in the mid-1980s.

Judges' comments

Armao's point of view has you sympathising with the vanquished, rather than the victor. The series of images show Armao's participation in the story - a bloody horror that mimics some of the moral dilemmas in Shakespearean plays.