WHEELING — Wheeling photographer Rebecca Kiger landed one of her shots on the cover of Time Magazine last year, and now her work recording the aftermath of the train derailment in East Palestine has won her honors for community awareness photography.

Kiger was among the six finalists for the Community Awareness Award announced last weekend by Pictures of the Year. The POY International Competition is for documentary photography, photojournalism, visual editing and online multimedia.

Each year more than 52,000 works are submitted to the contest by photojournalists from 71 nations. During three weeks of judging, a panel of 17 selects 240 winners.

“The purpose is to encourage attention to the small events in life that are often overshadowed by news and celebrate images that reflect the experiences and dreams of humankind,” she explained.

Kiger spent a year working on the assignment for Time through a grant from the Center for Contemporary Documentation.

“I was so thrilled that what I was recognized for was community awareness,” Kiger said. “The award recognizes a photographer’s extended story of the everyday life of people who make up a community.”

The images should “reflect the experiences and dreams of humankind,” she added.

Kiger’s photos appeared on the cover of Time, with 12 of them showing in the print edition and another 40 online.

The photos were part of a special edition of Time focusing on the one-year anniversary of the train derailment in East Palestine.

During the project, she worked with Kara Milstein, senior photo editor at Time, and Alice Gabriner, the director of the Center for Contemporary Documentation. Alejandro de la Garza was the writer for the Time article.

The Center for Contemporary Organization, a nonprofit organization, focuses on visually recording environmental-related topics, Kiger explained. The group initially selected to fund Kiger on a project with students at Bellaire High School. It was while she was working there that the train derailment happened in East Palestine.

She was first contacted by the Washington Post to go photograph the disaster.

Kiger said the special edition for Time on the trail derailment was the fifth project she had done for the magazine, but it was the first long-term project.

“They had already worked with me, and they saw what I was doing for the Washington Post.”

Kiger was excited to take the job.

“It was a dream of mine to work that way,” she explained. “I am better suited for long-term relationships rather than spot news. The communities deserve it.

“And East Palestine is just an hour and 15 minutes up the river. We all share a lot in common. It was amazing.”

Kiger added that when people invest in her, “I work so hard, and put my heart and soul into it.”

“I live here,” she said. “You care about the work in a different way when from a place, and you can understand it better when you are from here.

“The project is now significant because it lives in the world. It reaches a world audience, and keeps an issue alive. The photos get archived, and will be accessible for years to come,” Kiger added.