World Press Photo announced the winners of its 53rd annual contest today.
This year’s statistics:
During the two-week judging, the jury viewed a record number of photographs with 101,960 images submitted by 5,847 photographers. The photographers represent 128 different nationalities.
(a little math: two weeks = 14 days = 336 hours = 20160 minutes = 1209600 seconds divided by 101960 images = 11.8 seconds per image working 24/7 for two weeks??)
And the Photo of the Year is…
TA-DA!
The picture depicts women shouting in protest from a rooftop in Tehran on 24 June.
The winning photograph is part of a story depicting the nights following the contested presidential elections in Iran, when people shouted their dissent from roofs and balconies, after daytime protests in the streets. The story as a whole was awarded first prize in the category People in the News.
Jury chair Ayperi Karabuda Ecer said: “The photo shows the beginning of something, the beginning of a huge story. It adds perspectives to news. It touches you both visually and emotionally, and my heart went out to it immediately.”
A big shout out to buddy Adam Ferguson for winning a 1st place in the Spot News Single category:
and Kitra Cahana for her series from Rainbowland, New Mexico which took 1st place in Arts & Entertainment:
Also, a big congrats to Simon Roberts who was awarded a 3rd place in the Daily Life Stories category (buy his book We English):
Peter Bialobrzeski, who I interviewed last year (HERE) won a 2nd place in the Nature Stories category:
As to be expected, there were lots of powerful images of violence and poverty in this year’s pool of winners. There were also a few unexpected winners. Ou Zhihang’s series of nude self-portraits that show the artist performing push ups around China was not something I expected to see pick up an honorable mention at World Press Photo:
The judges also saw fit to make a Special Mention of a frame grab from a youtube video. The image is of Neda, the young Iranian woman who was shot and killed during last year’s election protests. Jury member David Griffin stated “I am pleased that World Press Photo has provided an avenue for non-professional images that have a significant impact on the historical visual record.”
Every year, there are winning images I like and those I don’t. But, that’s the way it should be. To me, it’s not about any shortcoming on the part of the jury, but rather, an indication of the diversity of press photography being made and how subjective photography and photo contests are in general.
See all the winners over at World Press Photo.
I spent 3 weeks in Tehran in June 2009. I got beat up, chased, held, hit by a baton, and I thought I was doing what I should have been doing.
Rooftops!? who would have thunk it. Big congrats to Pietro Masturzo. Rooftops were much safer and for sure a big of the real story. Smart and original.
Well thought comments James.
As usual there will be many disagreements on the winning images, but I must say, I thought the variety of approaches and visual styles, as well as the broad spectrum of represented countries, was refreshing.
WPP is always father out there as far as style goes in the PJ world, but this year was a good mix of the straightforward vs. the artistic approach.
Thanks for posting
jeremy