World Press Photo returning to Macau

Winner of the 2016 World Press Photo of the Year, Warren Richardson’s “Hope for a New Life”

The annual World Press Photo (WPP) tour will be coming to Macau once again this year and will be held at Casa Garden between October 1 and 23.
The exhibition, which displays the winning pieces from various photography and multimedia categories, selected de Casa de Portugal (CPM) as its Macau-based partner back in 2008.
Organizers from the local association told the Times that the exhibit costs around MOP 150,000 to host each year and is sponsored by the Macao Foundation, a government body. However, the prestigious cultural event is particularly notable for its absence of official representation.
According to CPM organizers, government ambassadors would not attend the exhibition’s opening ceremony, which is an unusual occurrence as there has always been a faithful attendance history of Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) delegates to the inauguration ceremonies of almost every other cultural event in the city.
Queried about whether there is any censorship pressure coming from the local government regarding the content to be exhibited, organizers quickly refuted the suggestion of any censorship.
“There is no censorship, but no government representation either,” said local organizer Diana Soeiro, adding, “I don’t think that there is any pressure not to exhibit.”
Although the WPP tour visits other locations in the Asia-Pacific region, namely Hong Kong, Taiwan and multiple cities across Australia and Japan, its historic relationship with CPM has given the local entity an edge over regional rivals.
For this reason, local organizer Soeiro told the Times yesterday that, this year, the exhibition will stop in Macau before heading to Hong Kong later in the year. This is crucial to the exhibition’s success, she explained, because a large proportion of the attendees are tourists traveling to the MSAR from Hong Kong.
“Usually we have a lot of people come from Hong Kong, but recently they [WPP] have opened an exhibition in Hong Kong,” said Soeiro. “This year [we have an agreement that] they will come to us before they visit Hong Kong,” in order to reduce the impact of the drop in the number of visitors to the Macau event.
Organizers believe that, although the exhibition is very expensive to host, it is entirely worth it.
“The photographs all have a lot of impact on people,” said Soeiro, “[capturing] many of the problems around the world.”
“These problems don’t affect Macau so much […] in Macau we don’t have these [kinds of] problems. But we still need to be aware of what the rest of the world is facing,” she added. “[For this reason] we will be presenting the photographs with captions in Portuguese, English and Chinese,” she said, in an effort to maximize their reach to the public.
This year, the winner of the World Press Photo of the Year is Warren Richardson from Australia for his photograph, titled “Hope for a New Life” (pictured). It captures the moment that a baby is handed, through a hole in a razor wire fence, to a Syrian refugee who has already managed to cross the border from Serbia into Hungary.
Formed in 1955 by a group of Dutch photographers, the WPP has since grown into one of the most prestigious awards in photojournalism and multimedia storytelling. According to the organization’s website, its traveling exhibition, which features 45 different countries and territories, reaches an audience of around 4 million people worldwide annually.
The rules of entry regarding photo manipulation were again revised for the 2016 competition, ruling out any digital change that “adds, rearranges, reverses, distorts or removes people or objects from within the frame.” Original camera files are also required from competitors who wish to have their submissions considered.
The 2016 competition will be showcased in Macau between October 1 and 23, and will be open to the public every day except Monday.