WORLD PRESS PHOTO 15
11.09.–18.10.2015
The jury of the 58th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected an image by Danish photographer Mads Nissen as the World Press Photo of the Year 2014. Nissen is a staff photographer for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken and is represented by Panos Pictures. The picture shows Jon and Alex, a gay couple, during an intimate moment in St Petersburg, Russia. Life for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people is becoming increasingly difficult in Russia. Sexual minorities face legal and social discrimination, harassment, and even violent hate-crime attacks from conservative religious and nationalistic groups. The winning picture belongs to a larger project by Nissen called »Homophobia in Russia« which was shot for Scanpix. The photo also won 1st Prize in the Contemporary Issues category.
Jury chair Michele McNally, director of photography and assistant managing editor of The New York Times, said: »It is an historic time for the image… the winning image needs to be aesthetic, to have impact, and to have the potential to become iconic. This photo is aesthetically powerful, and it has humanity.«
Since 1955 the board of the World Press Photo Foundation, an independent platform for photo-journalism which has its headquarters in Amsterdam, has invited press photographers and photo-journalists from all over the world to take part in the World Press Photo competition. An international jury, which is changed each year and this year consists of 17 members, judges the submitted entries that come from photographers, agencies, newspapers and magazines all over the world.
This year the competition received 97,912 entries from 5,692 professional photographers from 131 countries. The international jury awarded prizes across eight theme categories to 41 photographers from 17 countries.
It is not only an impressive demonstration of achievements in international photo-journalism but also a unique retrospective of events of worldwide importance and historical significance that have taken place during the previous year, covering such subjects as politics, culture, sports and nature.
The World Press Photo travelling exhibition attracts over three million people each year in 45 countries. This year, the world’s most prestigious annual exhibition of photojournalism visits Vienna for the 14th year running. The 13th edition in 2014 had over 23,000 visitors at WestLicht.
The yearbook including all awarded images from this year's contest, contains the best photo journalistic works of the year. Hence the large format publication is not only an exhibition catalogue, but also an independent, gripping contemporary document.
World Press Photo is supported by the Netherlands Postal Code Lottery and sponsored worldwide by Canon. For further information visit www.worldpressphoto.org.
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