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Renee Nowytarger

Biographical Notes from The Walkley Awards website for 2005

Photography: NIKON-WALKLEY PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR - DAILY LIFE/FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY Winner

Renee Nowytarger , The Australian

Renee Nowytarger started her photographic career as a cadet with the Cumberland Newspaper Group, then moved to The Australian newspaper in 1999. She took out the Nikon-Walkley portrait award in 2003, and is a past Walkley finalist for her coverage of the Bali bombing and of arriving refugees in Nauru.

Nowytarger's winning entry for Daily Life/Feature Photography is a series of powerful and confronting images of overcrowding in Manila's Navotas Prison in the Philippines. With up to 110 men sharing one cell, they are forced to sleep in shifts on a floor regularly flooded with polluted water from a nearby river. Their cell has just eight bunks, bucket showers and a small one-burner stove.

Her dramatic images educated and informed, and the visually layered imagery provided a horrifying look into the prison's inhumane conditions.

Nowytarger was also a finalist in 2005 for News Photography for her scenes of the devastation in Aceh after the Asian tsunami. It was in Aceh, too, that she captured her affecting series on the funeral of 12-year-old Nuratia, which was a finalist in Photographic Essay. Her images conveyed the tenderness and unspeakable pain of a family saying goodbye.

Judges' comments

Nowytarger's body of work was simply outstanding across several categories. She managed to be at every major news story in the region in the past year and created incredible images at them all. Nowytarger is an outstanding photographer who regularly maintains a high standard of work and professionalism.

Photography: NIKON-WALKLEY PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR - DAILY LIFE/FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY Winner

Renee Nowytarger , The Australian

Judges' comments

Nowytarger's body of work was simply outstanding across several categories. She managed to be at every major news story in the region in the past year and created incredible images at them all. Nowytarger is an outstanding photographer who regularly maintains a high standard of work and professionalism.