Black and white 35mm image taken by participant – Project Hope – from the project ‘The Journey Home From School’ by Laura Pannack
The winner of the inaugural Tom Stoddart Award for Excellence is Laura Pannack for her project ‘The Journey Home from School,’ which portrays the perilous journey children in the Cape Flats, South Africa, face while traveling to and from school.
The Tom Stoddart Award for Excellence was founded to support an established photographer working in long-form documentary with the production of a book. The award honors and promotes the legacy of the renowned late photographer Tom Stoddart and his commitment to supporting photojournalism.
Pannack’s project combines analog, photography, poetry, drawing, painting, and collages created by youth clubs and schools in various suburbs of Cape Town. This allowed her to build relationships with several young people and their families.
Ethan at the bus stop © Laura Pannack 
The bus stop boys © Laura Pannack 
Cyanotype made from drawing by participant from the project ‘The Journey Home From School’ by Laura Pannack
As part of the award, Pannack will receive £5,000 ($6,648) towards the completion of her project. She will work with GOST Books in the coming months to edit and sequence the photographs, artworks, and text, with the opportunity to travel to Italy to see the book go on press next year.
The award is organized in parallel with the Ian Parry Photojournalism Grant. The Call for Entries opened in July 2025, and in this first year of the award, there were 184 submissions from 47 countries.
“Tom would be immensely proud that we are able to continue supporting photographers and their long-form documentary work in his name. Many congratulations to Laura on being our inaugural recipient. I have followed her remarkable career from her early days working as an assistant to Simon Roberts, who in turn was an Ian Parry award recipient,” says Aidan Sullivan, founder and chairman of the Ian Parry Photojournalism Grant.
Who is Tom Stoddart?
Tom Stoddart was a distinguished British photojournalist whose four-decade career began at a local newspaper in the northeast of England.
He became a freelancer for major publications including The Sunday Times and covered some of the most pivotal moments in modern history: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Lebanese Civil War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the siege of Sarajevo, where he was wounded by a shell in 1992 but returned to document civilian life in the city.
He was honored with the Pictures of the Year International World Understanding Award in 2003 for his moving HIV/AIDS reportage in sub‑Saharan Africa, and that same year received the Larry Burrows Award for his coverage of British Royal Marines in Iraq.
Stoddart didn’t like color photography and often quoted Canadian photographer Ted Grant: “If you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes, but if you photograph in black and white, you photograph their souls.”
Diagnosed with cancer, he passed away on November 17, 2021, at his home in Ponteland, England, surrounded by his wife, Ailsa, and family.
“Tom’s archive stands as a profound record of both the horrors of war and the resilience of the human spirit — a lasting testament to the late 20th and early 21st centuries,” adds the IPPG.