The World Press Photo of the Year, by Mads Nissen
The world’s leading contest for photojournalists is returning to Macau next month. The World Press Photo Exhibition will be showcased at Casa Garden from October 10 to November 1. As usual, the event, displaying the results of a worldwide annual contest, will be brought to Macau by the House of Portugal (Casa de Portugal). The prize-winning pictures will be presented in a traveling exhibition to 100 cities in about 45 countries.
According to the World Press Photo Foundation, this year’s competition saw entries from 5,692 photographers submit from 131 countries. A total of 97,912 images were entered in the contest.
A group of internationally recognized professionals in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography convened in Amsterdam in February to judge all of the entries. The jury awarded 45 prizes in eight themed categories to 41 photographers of 17 nationalities, namely: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, Eritrea, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and USA.
The jury of the 58th annual World Press Photo Contest 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. 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 First Prize in the Contemporary Issues category.
The World Press Photo Foundation was created during the 1950s and the contest aims to encourage higher standards of photojournalism and documentary storytelling worldwide. Its aim is to generate wide public interest in and an appreciation of the work of photographers and other visual journalists, as well as to promote the free exchange of information.
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