Bangladeshi photographer wins $200,000 grand prize at Dubai's Hipa Awards

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A Bangladeshi photographer whose image captured a family sleeping amid the ruins of their fire-ravaged home has won the $200,000 (Dh734,500) grand prize at the 15th Hamdan bin…

A Bangladeshi photographer whose image captured a family sleeping amid the ruins of their fire-ravaged home has won the $200,000 (Dh734,500) grand prize at the 15th Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (Hipa) in Dubai.

Pinu Rahman received the top honour at the annual competition, which awarded a total of $1 million in prize money to photographers from around the world.

His winning photograph shows a family sleeping within the concrete walls left standing after a devastating fire swept through Korail, one of Dhaka's largest and most densely populated informal settlements, on November 25, 2025. The blaze, which took firefighters 16 hours to extinguish, destroyed or damaged about 1,500 homes and left thousands of residents without shelter. Many of Korail's residents are low-income families, including people displaced by climate-related disasters.

The image, which portrays the family's resilience in the aftermath of destruction, was recognised in a year when the competition's theme was Family, reflecting the UAE's designation of 2026 as the Year of the Family.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum presented Rahman with the grand prize at the ceremony, which was held under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence.

Photographers from across five continents were recognised in categories covering family, general photography, portfolios, sports and artificial intelligence.

“As we celebrate our fifteenth anniversary, we are proud to announce that Hipa's photo archive now holds more than one million photographs, contributed by an active community of over half a million photographers from 209 countries,” said Ali bin Thalith, Hipa's secretary general.

Among the winners were photographers from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Palestine.

Emirati photographer Hamid Obaid Al Ali won first place in the Family category with a striking underwater photograph…

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