World Press Photo of the Year
The vote for Press Photo of the Year is taken during the World Press Photo Awards, hosted by the Dutch foundation World Press Photo. The creator of the winning entry receives €10,000 along with "the most prestigious and coveted award in photojournalism."[1]
Besides Press Photo of the Year, the 20-member jury awards three more prizes in eight categories (general news, spot news, sports, contemporary issues, daily life, portraits, nature and long-term projects), whereby both individual images and photo series are recognised for excellence.[2]
The main prize is given to the image that "... is not only the photojournalistic encapsulation of the year, but represents an issue, situation or event of great journalistic importance, and does so in a way that demonstrates an outstanding level of visual perception and creativity."[3]
List of Press Photos of the Year
The following is a list of all winners of the Press Photo of the Year, and information on the respective images.
Contest year | Photographer | Subject | Description | Web link |
---|---|---|---|---|
1955 | ![]() |
Motorcycle racing | On 28 August 1955, at Volk Mølle Racetrack in Assentoft, Denmark, a motorcyclist crashes during a competition. | Image |
1956 | ![]() |
Coming home from the war | A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter in West Germany, who has not seen him since infancy. | Image |
1957 | ![]() |
Racial segregation in the United States | Accompanied by violence and harassment, Dorothy Counts becomes one of the first African American students at Harry Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. | Image |
1958 | No award given. | |||
1959 | ![]() |
Football | During a football game between the teams Sparta Praha and Červená Hviezda Bratislava, Sparta's goalkeeper Miroslav Čtvrtníček stands on the football field in pouring rain. | Image |
1960 | No award given. | |||
1961 | ![]() |
Assassination of Inejiro Asanuma | On 12 October 1960, the 17-year-old extreme right-wing student Otoya Yamaguchi kills the socialist politician Inejiro Asanuma with a sword during a speech in Tokyo's Hibiya Hall. | Image |
1962 | ![]() |
El Porteñazo uprising in Venezuela | During the El Porteñazo military rebellion, a dying soldier clings to a priest with sniper fire all around them. | Image |
1963 | ![]() |
Suppression of Buddhists in Vietnam | The Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself ablaze in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. | Image |
1964 | ![]() |
Cyprus Conflict | A Turkish woman mourns her dead husband, victim of the Greek–Turkish civil war. | Image |
1965 | ![]() |
Vietnam War | A mother and her children wade through a river in Loc Thuong in the South Vietnamese province of Binh Dinh to escape US bombing. | Image |
1966 | ![]() |
Vietnam War | On 24 February 1966, American troops drag the body of a Viet Cong fighter behind their M113 Armored Personnel Carrier for burial, after he was killed in a fierce night attack by several Viet Cong battalions against Australian forces during the Battle of Long Tan on 18 August 1966. | Image |
1967 | ![]() |
Vietnam War | The commander of an M48 Patton looks through his lens. This was the first colour photograph to win the award. | Image |
1968 | ![]() |
Vietnam War | On 1 February 1968, the South Vietnamese police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém on a street in Saigon with a bullet to the head. | Image |
1969 | ![]() |
The Troubles | An Irish Catholic wearing a gas mask stands in front of a wall with the graffiti we want peace, moments before teargas is thrown by British troops. | Image |
1970 | No award given. | |||
1971 | No award given. | |||
1972 | ![]() |
Bank robbery in Saarbrücken | After a bank robbery in Saarbrücken, a shootout takes place between police and the bank robbers. | Image |
1973 | ![]() |
Vietnam War | The young Phan Thị Kim Phúc and other children flee with severe burns caused by napalm, mistakenly dropped by South Vietnamese planes. | Image |
1974 | ![]() |
Coup in Chile | On 11 September 1973, president Salvador Allende appears shortly before his death in the presidential palace La Moneda during General Pinochet's military coup. Lagos's identity as the photographer was not revealed until February 2007, a month after his death. | Image |
1975 | ![]() |
Sahel famine, Niger | A small child suffers during a drought in Niger. | Image |
1976 | ![]() |
Fire Escape Collapse | During a fire in a Boston apartment building, the fire escape collapses and a woman falls down with her goddaughter. The woman died at the scene of impact. | Image |
1977 | ![]() |
Lebanese Civil War | In January 1976, a group of Palestinian refugees flees civil war in Beirut. | Image |
1978 | ![]() |
Apartheid | The South African police tear-gas a group of demonstrators in Modderdam, near Cape Town. | Image |
1979 | ![]() |
Sanrizuka Struggle | After years of protests against the construction of Narita Airport, which is ready to open when on 26 March 1978 serious clashes break out between demonstrators and Riot Police Unit. | Image |
1980 | ![]() |
Fall of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia | In November 1979, in a refugee camp in Sa Keo near the Thai–Cambodian border, a woman holds her child in her arms. | Image |
1981 | ![]() |
Famine in Karamoja, Uganda | In April 1980, a white missionary in northeastern Uganda holds the comparatively tiny hand of a starving African boy. | Image |
1982 | ![]() |
23-F coup attempt in Madrid | On 23 February 1981 Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero speaks with a gun in his hand before the Spanish Congress of Deputies, holding hostage the government and MPs. | Image |
1983 | ![]() |
1982 Lebanon War | On 18 September 1982, Palestinian corpses lie in the street in the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Phalangist Maronite Christian militias killed Palestinian refugees. | Image |
1984 | ![]() |
Earthquake in Turkey | On 30 October 1983, following a devastating earthquake in the vicinity of Erzurum and Kars, Kezban Özer finds her five children buried alive. | Image |
1985 | ![]() |
Bhopal disaster | The body of a child, killed in a chemical accident at the plant of US chemical company Union Carbide Corporation, is buried. | Image |
1986 | ![]() |
Omayra Sánchez | Sánchez, a victim of the Armero volcanic disaster, died after being trapped in a mud hole for 60 hours. | Image |
1987 | ![]() ![]() |
AIDS | American AIDS patient Ken Meeks sits in a wheelchair. On his arms are numerous lesions caused by Kaposi's sarcoma. | Image |
1988 | ![]() |
Election in South Korea | On 18 December 1987, a desperate mother in Kuro, South Korea leans against a riot policeman's shield and begs for mercy for her son, arrested during a demonstration. After the November election there were protests against the government, accused of electoral fraud. | Image |
1989 | ![]() |
Earthquake in Armenia | In Leninakan, Boris Abgarzian grieves for his 17-year-old son, a victim of the Armenian earthquake. | Image |
1990 | ![]() |
Tiananmen Square Massacre | A protester, later dubbed Tank Man, stops a group of People's Liberation Army battle tanks during the massacre in Tiananmen, Beijing. | Image |
1991 | ![]() |
Kosovo conflict | The family of Nashim Elshani grieves around his deathbed; he was killed while protesting for Kosovar autonomy. | Image |
1992 | ![]() |
Gulf War | US Sergeant Ken Kozakiewicz mourns the death of fellow soldier Andy Alaniz, killed by friendly fire. | Image |
1993 | ![]() |
Famine in Somalia | A Somali mother lifts up the body of her child, killed by malnutrition. | Image |
1994 | ![]() |
Palestinian territories | Palestinian children raise their toy guns in the air. | Image |
1995 | ![]() |
Rwandan genocide | Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu Interahamwe militia, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. | Image |
1996 | ![]() |
First Chechen War | A boy peers out of a refugee-packed bus fleeing fighting near Shali, Chechnya and heading for Grozny. | Image |
1997 | ![]() |
Angolan Civil War | Young land mine victims play in the Angolan city of Kuito. | Image |
1998 | ![]() |
Algerian Civil War | A woman mourns the victims of a massacre in Bentalha, Algeria. | Image |
1999 | ![]() |
Kosovo conflict | Relatives and friends comfort the widow of a KLA fighter, shot dead while on patrol the previous day. | Image |
2000 | ![]() |
Kosovo War | A wounded Kosovar Albanian refugee walks the streets of Kukës, Albania. | Image |
2001 | ![]() |
Immigration to the United States | A Mexican immigrant works in order to feed her children. | Image |
2002 | ![]() |
Refugee disaster in Afghanistan | In the Jalozai refugee camp, the body of an Afghan boy is prepared for burial. | Image |
2003 | ![]() ![]() |
Earthquake in Iran | A boy holds the trousers of his dead father, killed in the 22 June 2002 earthquake. | Image |
2004 | ![]() |
Iraq War | An Iraqi prisoner of war with a hood over his head comforts his son at a holding centre. | Image |
2005 | ![]() |
Indian Ocean earthquake | Two days after the tsunami, a desperate Indian woman mourns a relative killed in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu. | Image |
2006 | ![]() |
Niger food crisis | A mother and her child wait for food in an emergency center in Tahoua, Niger. | Image |
2007 | ![]() |
Lebanon War | Five young Lebanese ride in a convertible through the rubble of a bombed South Beirut.[4][5] | Image |
2008 | ![]() |
Afghanistan War | An exhausted American soldier leans against a wall and keeps his eyes covered. | Image |
2009 | ![]() |
Subprime mortgage crisis | An armed officer moves through a home following residents' eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. | Image |
2010 | ![]() |
2009 Iranian presidential election | An Iranian woman shouting from a rooftop in Tehran in protest against the result of Iranian presidential elections held in 2009. | Image |
2011 | ![]() |
Taliban treatment of women | Bibi Aisha, 18, was disfigured as retribution for fleeing her husband's house in Oruzgan province, in the center of Afghanistan. At the age of 12, Aisha and her younger sister had been given to the family of a Taliban fighter under a Pashtun tribal custom for settling disputes. | Image |
2012 | ![]() |
Protests in Yemen, Arab Spring | A woman holds a wounded relative in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011. | Image |
2013 | ![]() |
Victims of Operation Pillar of Defense | Grieving men carry to their funerals two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her three-year-old brother Muhammad, killed by an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City that killed their father, Fouad, and critically injured their mother. Taken 20 November 2012. | Image |
2014 | ![]() |
African migrants | Migrants on the shore of Djibouti City raise their cell phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia. | Image |
2015 | ![]() |
Homophobia in Russia | The photo shows a gay couple during an intimate moment, reminding the beholder that life for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people is becoming increasingly difficult in Russia. | Image |
2016 | ![]() |
European migrant crisis | A nocturnal image showing a man passing a baby through a barbed wire fence on the Serbia-Hungary border, namely between Horgoš (Serbia) and Röszke (Hungary). | Image |
2017 | ![]() |
Assassination of Andrei Karlov | The photo shows police officer Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş standing next to Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, moments after he shot him in the back. Altıntaş shot Karlov to protest Russia's involvement in the Syrian Civil War. | Image |
2018 | ![]() |
Crisis in Venezuela | José Salazar, 28, catches fire amid violent clashes with riot police during a protest against president Nicolás Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. Salazar was set alight when the gas tank of a motorbike exploded. He survived the incident with first and second-degree burns. President Maduro had announced plans to revise Venezuela's democratic system by forming a constituent assembly to replace the opposition-led National Assembly. | Image |
2019 | ![]() |
Immigration policy of Donald Trump | A Honduran toddler cries as she and her mother are taken into custody by US border officials in McAllen, Texas. | Image |
2020 | ![]() |
Sudanese coup d'état | The photo shows a young man reciting protest poems during a nightly power cut in Khartoum on 19 June 2019. He is surrounded by numerous people who illuminate him with their mobile phones and chant slogans for the restoration of civilian rule. In a time of violence and conflict, the jury chairman deliberately chose a photo that symbolises hope and does not depict war and violence. | Image |
See also
References
- Press Photo of the Year, from Stern.de.
- About the contest, from worldpressphoto.nl.
- World Press Photo returns to USC Annenberg
- Putz, Ulrike (28 February 2007). "Catering to a Lebanese Cliché: World Press Photo Mix-Up". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 11 October 2019 – via Spiegel Online.
- "Lebanon war image causes controversy". 8 March 2007. Retrieved 11 October 2019 – via news.bbc.co.uk.
- "Mads Nissen’s Homophobia in Russia wins World Press Photo of the Year". British Journal of Photography, 12 February 2015. Accessed 8 May 2017
- "Intimate photograph of gay Russian couple wins World Press Photo of the Year 2014". The Independent, 12 February 2015. Accessed 8 May 2017
- "Photo of Loving Couple Wins World Press Photo Award". Time, 12 February 2015. Accessed 8 May 2017