Costco”s 2005
photo contest
honors members”
best shots
PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES captured
by an imaginative eye, whether
they are analog or digital, will
always have the potential to arrest our
attention and evoke our emotions.
The winners of this year’s Costco International Photo Contest are no exception.
Selected from more than 20,000 photos,
the winners come from each of the eight
countries in which Costco operates.
We’ve spotlighted a few here.
To see all of the winners (and a retrospective of winners from the past
decade), log on to costco.com, then click
on “Costco Connection.”
Our thanks to all of the photographers
and their subjects, our team of judges
and our sponsors—Costco 1-Hour Photo,
Kodak and Pioneer photo albums.
Pensive portrait
ZABI TOWFIQUE WAS SMUGGLED out of
war-torn Afghanistan as a 16-year-old after
the Soviet invasion. Nearly two decades later,
he returned to reunite with family members
and rediscover his homeland.
Of the numerous photos that Towfique
took during his trip in May 2004, the one that
grabbed him most was this Mona Lisa–esque
image of Nabila, a 13-year-old cousin whom
he had never met. Towfique, an avid photographer, took the black-and-white image with
a medium-format camera.
“She was incredibly shy,” says Towfique,
37, who works in the printing industry.
“When you put a camera in somebody’s face,
they’re usually uncomfortable. But she gradually became more at ease. I just followed her
First-place U.S. winner around for a couple of hours and took pho-
Zabi Towfique tos. This was one of the images that really got
Hayward, CA to me.”
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