The Sony World Photography Awards are underway and it seems we have someone from our very own Malaysia in the running. Student photographer, Nur Hidayati Binti Abd. Rahman (age 20) a student at the Faculty Of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Malaysia. She beat out the competition World Wide to represent Malaysia and took a series of powerful photographs.
Being a photographer is hard work. Some never get recognized, regardless of their work.
However, with this platform, Nur Hidayati can take advantage of being seen by a global audience. This exposure will continue when Nur, her tutor, and the 9 other shortlisted students travel to London for the award ceremony. Once there, they will have the chance to have their portfolios reviewed by experts, a masterclass artist Nadav Kander (recipient of the Awards’ 2019 Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize) and have their work shown as part of the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition.
The winner of the ‘Student Photographer of the Year’ will be announced on 17th April. The winning student will receive €30,000 (RM 138,000) of Sony digital imaging equipment for their institution.
Nur was shortlisted for her first series “Rural Life In Urban World”. She has since created her second series “Soul of The Wild” which focuses on the harmony between humans and animals. Here, she depicts a young teenager named Syukor who is the youngest of eight children in Terengganu, Malaysia. Syukor grew up surrounded by animals on his fathers farm. Her series captures the interactions and unique bonds between the buffaloes and Syukor. The aim was to demonstrate the sense of belonging Syukor had with these huge animals.
Regarding here series of photographs, Nur Hidayati explains what a difficult process it was to capture it;
“This idea was really challenging because I needed to find the right moments of animal behavior toward Syukor. I’m not someone who is brave enough to touch these animals or even go near them. However, I tried to overcome my weakness little by little to capture those beautiful moments”
