(Courtesy The Empty Quarter, Dubai)

'Tis the season for Paris Photo, where 102 galleries and publishers from 23 countries are taking part in the world's leading photography fair. This year's fair, which runs through Sunday at the Carrousel du Louvre, spotlights Arab and Iranian photography with a three-part project curated by Catherine David. Among the first orders of business was the announcement of the winner of the BMW - Paris Photo Prize for contemporary photography, a $15,000 award given annually to an artist whose work best embodies a given theme. The 2009 theme, tied to BMW France's ad campaign, was "When was the last time you experienced something for the first time?"

The winner is Karijn Kakebeeke, a Dutch photographer who is represented by Dubai gallery The Empty Quarter. Kakebeeke, 35, is known for photojournalistic images like "Khadija's Dream" (2006, pictured above), her prizewinning work that records the moment when a girl named Khadija first played with a soccer ball. Today Khadija is a member of Afghanistan's first female soccer team. For Matthias Harder, curator at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and a member of the 2009 BMW - Paris Photo Prize jury, the image shows "a glimpse of happiness," he said in a statement. "Kakebeeke's genre scene convinced the jury owing to the controversial nature of the topic chosen and its relevance to the given theme."