Orsi Ajpek

Orsi Ajpek was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with All she wanted was a photo of the new-born babies and asked that István and Tamás love the twins.

Orsi Ajpek graduated as a photojournalist from the Hungarian Association of Journalists in 2006 and then graduated in Communication and Media from Milton Friedman University in Budapest. She has worked at several Hungarian printed and online publications as a photojournalist and photo editor, as well as head of the photo department. In 2013, she joined the editorial team of the leading Hungarian news portal (Index.hu) and worked for the paper until the resignation of the entire staff. Along with the departing staff, she was involved in the founding of Telex.hu in 2020, where she heads up the photography department. In her work, she focuses on public and political events, and in long-term projects she works on human stories that highlight the deep-seated problems of Hungarian society. She has photographed a series on a wheelchair-bound Paralympian who became disabled due to a medical error, as well as a series on severely disabled autists, and most recently of a rainbow family who were the last such family to adopt in Hungary, due to a change in the law. She has won the Hungarian Press Photography Award eight times and in 2023, she was awarded a special prize by the jury of the Hungarian Press Development Journalism Award.

Ilir Gashi

Ilir Gashi was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with The alternative Balkan postal system.

Ilir Gashi is a journalist, activist, and media development expert based in Belgrade, Serbia. He started working in journalism at the age of 14, initially as a reviewer of computer games. He quit journalism writing in 2002 to initiate the massive human rights/legal literacy program “U pravu si!” [You are right / You have the right] used by hundreds of thousands of school students and citizens in Serbia over the following decade. 

Between 2014 and 2017, Ilir led the Slavko Curuvija Foundation, an organization working in media freedom, sustainability of local media and safety of journalists in Serbia. There he created multiple initiatives, including “Cenzolovka”, a popular portal reporting on all issues relating to freedom of media, and a School of Digital Journalism for young local media journalists. In 2017 he co-initiated the Group for Freedom of Media, gathering hundreds of NGOs, independent media, journalists, activists and citizens to jointly fight the government’s efforts to control the media in Serbia.

Currently, Ilir works with journalists, local media outlets and community-based NGOs all across the Balkans, to help them tell their stories more powerfully. His frequent trips between Belgrade and Pristina in the past couple of years led him to discoveries of people and stories that inspired him to start writing again.