2023-04-20 13:30:04
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has marked the political agenda of the last year, but also the artistic one since the war began on February 24, 2022. It seemed inevitable that the World Press Photo, which recognizes the best photographic works of the year, was not also present. marked by the horrors captured by photojournalists who moved to Ukraine. A heartbreaking image of an attack on a Mariupol maternity hospital, with a pregnant woman being evacuated from the bombardments, has been the winning image of this edition.
It is one of the four awarded works this year, which have been chosen among the 24 regional winners, which in turn emerged from the more than 60,000 photographs submitted by 3,752 photographers from 127 countries. An edition where there has also been recognition for two Spanish photographers who have been chosen as regional winners in Europe. The young documentary photographer César Dezfuli (Madrid, 1991) has won a World Press Photo 2023 in the Open Format category of the European region with Passengersa project started in 2016 and still ongoing on the complex reality of migration in the central Mediterranean, and the photojournalist Emilio Morenatti (Zaragoza, 1969) has received an honorable mention for War Woundsa very personal report about war-wounded civilians in Ukraine.
World Press Photo of the Year
Mariupol Maternity Hospital Airstrikede Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press
Iryna Kalinina (32), an injured pregnant woman, is carried from a maternity hospital that was damaged during a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. Her baby, named Miron (from the word “peace”) ), Was born dead. Half an hour later Iryna also died. An OSCE report concluded that the hospital was deliberately attacked by Russia, killing three and injuring some 17.
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, they immediately attacked the strategically important Azov Sea port of Mariupol. On May 20, Russia gained full control of the city, which had been devastated by shelling, and tens of thousands of civilians had fled or died. Maloletka was one of the few photographers who documented events in Mariupol at the time. The jury has felt that his story communicated the horror of war for civilians; and have praised the photographer’s resilience as he worked under immense pressure and imminent threat.
World Press Photo for Graphic Report of the Year
The Price of Peace in Afghanistan (The Price of Peace in Afghanistan) by Mads Nissen for Politiken/Panos Pictures
Women and children beg for bread in front of a bakery in central Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 14, 2022.
The Price of Peace in Afghanistan (The Price of Peace in Afghanistan) by Mads Nissen for Politiken/Panos Pictures
Unable to afford food for the family, the parents of Khalil Ahmad (15) decided to sell his kidney for $3,500. The lack of work and the threat of starvation have led to a dramatic increase in the illegal organ trade. A photograph taken in Herat, Afghanistan, January 19, 2022.
The Price of Peace in Afghanistan (The Price of Peace in Afghanistan) by Mads Nissen for Politiken/Panos Pictures
A Taliban propaganda mural covers the wall of the former US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on January 13, 2022. In front of the wall, street vendors sell flags and other merchandise.
World Press Photo to the Long Term Project
Battered Waters (Aguas maltratadas), de Anush Babajanyan para VII Agency/National Geographic Society
Women visit a hot spring that erupted from the dry bed of the Aral Sea, near the village of Akespe, Kazakhstan, on August 27, 2019. The world’s fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea, has lost 90% of its contents since the river water was diverted.
Four landlocked Central Asian countries are grappling with the climate crisis and a lack of coordination over their shared water supplies. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, on the upper reaches of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, need extra power in winter. At the bottom, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan need water in the summer for agriculture. Historically, countries seasonally traded fossil fuel energy for released water, but since the fall of the USSR and the rise of privatized industries, this system has become unbalanced. Unsustainable water use and recent intense droughts add to the challenges.
World Press Photo in Open Format
The Doors Don’t Know Me (Here, the doors do not recognize me), de Mohamed Mahdy
This collaborative web project explores the effects of sea level rise on the local community of Al Max, a fishing village located along the Mahmoudiyah channel in Alexandria, Egypt. For generations, its inhabitants have lived and worked on the canal that leads to the Mediterranean Sea. In 2020, the Egyptian government began to evict parts of Al Max and relocate people to homes several kilometers away from the canals, not only demolishing houses, but also endangering the neighborhood’s collective memory and local culture. The stories featured in this project speak to the precariousness of people fighting for recognition amid global economic and environmental turmoil. Using found images and the artist’s own photography, Mahdy’s project presents an elegy to a communal way of life on the brink of extinction.
World Press Photo in Open Format of the Europe region
Passengersby Cesar Dezfuli for De Volkskrant
Since 2015, the influx of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from Africa to Europe has been covered in the European media as a series of humanitarian crises or as a set of abstract statistics. On August 1, 2016, a boat carrying 118 people was found adrift off the Libyan coast, one of hundreds that have required rescue in recent years. What happened to these individuals after they arrived in Europe? The project Passengerspresented as a multimedia web for De Volkskrant, highlights various personal stories from the people who were on that ship in 2016 as they seek to establish a new life across the continent.
honorable mention
War Wounds, by Emilio Morenatti, for Associated Press
Viktor (23) carries his wife Oksana Balandina (23) in a hospital in Lviv, on May 14, 2022. The couple got married while Oskana was in the hospital, and Viktor carried her like this for their first dance.
This project portrays people who suffered amputations as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The photographer, who lost a leg while reporting in Afghanistan, feels camaraderie with amputees and strives to depict the cruelty of war behind the front. While territory can be surrendered and retaken, the loss of a limb, like the loss of a life, is permanent. The jury has highlighted the sympathy and empathy with which the story was handled.
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