A picture of a fatally-wounded pregnant woman by Evgeniy Maloletka, taken on March 9, 2022, wins WPP Photo of The Year award
Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka won the World Press Photo of the Year award yesterday for his harrowing image of emergency workers carrying a pregnant woman through the shattered grounds of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in the chaotic aftermath of a Russian attack.
The Ukrainian photographer’s March 9, 2022, image of the fatally wounded woman, her left hand on her bloodied lower left abdomen, drove home the horror of Russia’s brutal onslaught in the eastern port city early in the war.
The 32-year-old woman, Iryna Kalinina, died of her injuries a half-hour after giving birth to the lifeless body of her baby, named Miron.
“For me, it is a moment that all the time I want to forget, but I cannot. The story will always stay with me,” Maloletka said in an interview before the announcement.
“Evgeniy Maloletka captured one of the most defining images of the Russia-Ukraine war amid incredibly challenging circumstances. Without his unflinching courage, little would be known of one of Russia’s most brutal attacks. We are enormously proud of him,” AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Julie Pace said.
Maloletka, AP video journalist Mystyslav Chernov and AP producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, who are also Ukrainian, arrived in Mariupol just as Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, sparked Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. They stayed for more than two weeks, chronicling the Russian military pounding the city and hitting hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. An AP investigation found that as many as 600 people may have been killed when a Mariupol theater being used as a bomb shelter was hit on March 16 last year.
The three were the only international journalists left in the city when they finally managed a risky escape.
World Press Photo Foundation Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury told the AP that jury members decided quickly Maloletka’s image should win the prestigious prize.
She said it was “apparent from the beginning that it needed to win.
Maloletka said the team believed it was important to remain in Mariupol, despite the danger, “to collect the people’s voices and collect their emotions and to show them all around the world.”
A series of photos by Maloletka from besieged Mariupol won an array of regional and international prizes.
“I think it is really important that specifically a Ukrainian won the contest showing the atrocities against civilians by Russian forces in Ukraine,” he said.
In the three other global categories announced yesterday, two-time World Press Photo winner Mads Nissen of Denmark won Photo Story of the Year for his series for Politiken and Panos Pictures, titled “The Price of Peace in Afghanistan,” about daily life in Afghanistan in 2022.
Anush Babajanyan of Armenia won the Long-Term Project award for “Battered Waters” for VII Photo and National Geographic Society, and Egyptian photographer Mohamed Mahdy won the Open Format award for “Here, The Doors Don’t Know Me.” MDT/AP
