World Press Photo Awards: Hot current issues

On February 10, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the 55th annual World Press Photo (WPP) Awards Council officially announced the awards. The photos selected for the WPP awards this time are all press photos that clearly reflect the world's political life in 2011.

WPP 55 Grand Prize-Winning Photo by Samuel Aranda.

Victory of “The Veiled Woman”

From more than 100,000 entries by 5,000 professional photographers, the jury of the 55th annual WPP Awards selected this photo (tentatively titled “Veiled Woman”) by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda as the press photo of the year for 2011. The photo, which was published in The New York Times, shows a woman comforting an injured relative in Yemen in 2011. Aranda said the Muslim woman is almost completely covered in a black robe, leaving only her face and arms exposed. The photo was taken on October 15 at a mosque in Sana, Yemen, which was used as a field hospital after protesters against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s decades of rule clashed with government forces, early in the photographer’s two-month assignment in Yemen. Aranda's photo also won first prize in the People of the News category. He will receive 10,000 euros (approximately $13,300) at the awards ceremony later this year.

Explaining the selection of “The Veiled Woman” as the “champion” of the press photo of the year, the 55th WPP jury said that Aranda’s photo captured many aspects of the wave of uprisings across the Middle East, also known as the Arab Spring movement, one of the world’s biggest events in 2011. “The winning photo shows a moment of pain and compassion, the aftermath of a major event, which is still ongoing,” said WPP 55 jury chairman Aidan Sullivan. “We may never know who this woman is, comforting her injured relative, but they have become a living image of the courage of ordinary people, helping to create an important chapter in Middle Eastern history.” "The photo represents Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, all the countries that made up the Arab Spring," said jury member Koyo Kouoh. "But it also shows a different side of what happened and the role of women in it, not just as a backer but as an active participant in the uprising." The New York Times Lens blog described the winning photo as having "the mood of a Renaissance painting." "The woman is not just crying. There is something more. You can feel that this is a really strong woman," Aranda said of the female subject in his photo.

Press photos - timeliness is the number 1 requirement

The fact that most of the award-winning photos clearly reflect the key events that occurred in 2011 shows that the priority or top award criteria of the WPP jury members are still the topicality and the issues in each press photo work. The artistic criteria are considered important, but are the second factor. This can be clearly seen through a series of photos selected and awarded the highest prizes at the 55th World Press Photo Awards.

In addition to the “champion” “Veiled Woman” by photographer Samuel Aranda, which clearly depicts the “Arab Spring”, Japanese photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba of the French news agency AFP won first prize in the People in News category with a photo of a woman holding her daughter’s diploma standing among the rubble of her tsunami-damaged house in Japan. In addition, there was also a portrait of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung hanging in a residential area in the capital Pyongyang, North Korea won first prize in the Daily Life category taken by photographer Damir Sagolj for the news agency Reuters; A photo of protesters crying, chanting and shouting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Egypt, after listening to a speech in which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he would not give up power on February 10, 2011; The photo of rebels in Ras Lanuf, Libya, taken on February 11, 2011 by photographer Yuri Kozyrev (Russia) of Noor Photo agency, for Time, won first prize in the location news category.

There are also other themes that stand out in the WPP 55 award-winning series. For example, the second-place sports series by photographer Adam Pretty for Getty Images depicts swimmers training for the 14th FINA World Championships at the Oriental Stadium in Shanghai, China on July 17, 2011.

According to congluan.vn