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FILE PHOTO. An exhibition of submissions for the Andrei Stenin contest in South Africa. © Sputnik / Aleksandr Arfyev

The 2022 Andrey Stenin International Press Photo Contest began accepting submissions on Wednesday, marking the birthday of the slain Russian reporter whose memory it honors. Andrey was killed in 2014 in eastern Ukraine.

The annual competition is held in commemoration of the acclaimed photo journalist, who died at the age of only 33, and has retained the format of previous years.

Young journalists will be competing for prizes in four categories: ‘Top News,’ ‘Sports,’ ‘My Planet’ and ‘Portrait. A Hero of Our Time,’ with both individual images and series eligible for submission.

The coming year’s competition comes with awards ranging from 75,000 rubles (about $1,000) to 125,000 rubles ($1,700) in each category, the Grand Prix being 700,000 rubles ($9,500).

The organizing committee said it hopes that, despite pandemic restrictions, it will again be able to tour shortlisted works around the world, as it had in previous years. The competition is backed by the UN’s education, science and culture agency UNESCO, by a number of journalistic and humanitarian organizations worldwide, and by Rossiya-Kultura, the Russian culture-focused public broadcaster.

Andrei Stenin was a photojournalist who worked for the Rossiya Segodnya media group. He was killed in 2014 while covering the civil conflict in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Wednesday would have been his 41st birthday. The photo contest named after him launches each year on this date and 2022’s is the eighth in a row.