Indy Photo Team Wins Twice at Annual Ippies Awards

The Indypendent’s photo team was honored twice for its outstanding work at the annual Ippies Awards banquet on April 12. Andrew Stern won third place for Best Photo for his shot of two passionate young demonstrators marching through the Financial District last May (see above). Four Indy photographers —  Amelia Krales, Liz Borda, Julie Turkewitz and Ashley Marinaccio —  shared third place for Best Photo Essay for their work (“We Contain Multitudes”) which chronicled Occupy Wall Street protesters who were living at  Zuccotti Park last fall and their reasons for joining the protest.

“It was so exciting to win, especially on behalf of The Indypendent,” said Krales, the paper’s photo coordinator who won second place last year for her photo essay “Living Positively with HIV.”

The Ippies were established a decade ago by the Independent Press Association of New York as the only journalism awards in New York that honor outstanding work by the city’s ethnic and community media outlets. This year marked the first time they were held under the auspices of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Garry Pierre-Pierre, executive director of the CUNY J-School’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media Initiative, said that submissions to this year’s Ippies Awards were up 40 percent from 2011.