A YOUNG photographer is celebrating after scooping an award established in the name of a former Cherwell School pupil.

Emma Valbret, 17, from Sunnymead, in Oxford is this year’s winner of the school’s Dan Hemingway Memorial Award.

Dan, a former Cherwell pupil, died aged 19, after a collision with a car while cycling along the A40 on Christmas morning in 1991.

Emma won the award for a photograph of her school friend Maria Abdelkarim, 17, with silver face paint.

She said: “I wanted to do something which could have lots of different interpretations. There wasn’t necessarily one certain message I was trying to put across, but for me it was to do with social pressures on how people look and women in particular.

“It has a metallic look showing a hard exterior covering any skin imperfections.

“It was amazing to win, I really didn’t think I was going to. I was so surprised."

The £350 award goes to a sixth-former at the school every year.