Impressive pictures

These are the winners of the World Press Photo Awards

Alejandro Cegarra captured a migrant on the roof of the freight train "The Beast" - and thus won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award.(Bild: AP/World Press Photo /Bloomberg/The New York Times/Alejandro Cegarra)

From moving snapshots to breathtaking landscapes: Images by press photographers make the multi-layered events around the world even more visible. The most spectacular of these are honored at the World Press Photo Awards. This year's winning image shows the mourning in the Gaza war.

The photo of a grieving Palestinian woman holding her dead five-year-old niece, who is wrapped in a white cloth, has won the renowned international photo competition "World Press Photo". This was announced by the jury on Thursday. Mohammed Salem took the picture for the Reuters news agency on October 17, 2023 in a hospital in Khan Younis, where relatives were searching for dead relatives after an Israeli airstrike.

Winning photo "composed with care and respect"
 The jury praised Salem's photo as "composed with care and respect". It offered "simultaneously a metaphorical and literal insight into an unimaginable loss". Jury chair Fiona Shields praised the great expressiveness of the photo. "It is indescribably moving to see and at the same time an argument for peace that is extremely powerful, especially when peace sometimes seems like an impossible fantasy."

A Palestinian woman holds her dead five-year-old niece in her arms - this is the winning photo of this year's World Press Photo Award.(Bild: AP/World Press Photo/Reuters/Mohammed Salem)

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Salem, a 39-year-old Palestinian photographer who has worked for Reuters since 2003, received the award back in 2010. "I felt that the picture summed up the general sense of what was happening in Gaza," Salem said when the photo was first published in November. "People were confused and running from one place to another because they wanted to know what had happened to their loved ones. I noticed this woman who was holding the little girl's body and wouldn't let go," said Salem, whose wife had just given birth the day before the photo was taken.

"War is personal" also among the winners
Photo story of the year is a reportage by South African Lee-Ann Olwage for the magazine "Geo" about the treatment of dementia patients in Madagascar. The jury praised the warmth and tenderness in the pictures. Venezuelan-born photographer Alejandro Cegara was honored in the long-term projects category for a series on immigration in Mexico. Ukrainian photographer Julia Kochetova won first prize for her project "War is personal". According to the jury, her project shows how war affects people personally on a daily basis.

The director of World-Press-Photo, Joumana El Zein Khoury, referred to the personal connection between the photographers and their subjects. "This helps them to give us a deeper understanding, which hopefully leads to empathy and compassion." She also reminded the audience that many photojournalists have to work at great personal risk and that many journalists were killed in the Gaza war last year.

The best pictures can also be seen in Vienna
A total of 33 photographers were honored. More than 3800 took part in the competition with more than 61,000 photos. All the award-winning photos will be shown in an exhibition that can be seen in more than 60 countries worldwide. In Austria, the photos will be on display for several weeks in the fall at the WestLicht Gallery in Vienna.