World Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organisation founded in Amsterdam in 1955. Every year since then a travelling exhibition of its photos has toured the world, visited annually by over two million people in 45 countries. The images selected are the winners of the prestigious competition run by the organisation, which aims to promote high standards in professional photojournalism. The exhibition is currently in its Buenos Aires residence, the Centro Cultural Borges, until 4th October.
The photos on show are presented as singles or in series, roughly grouped into categories such as spot news, general news, people in the news, sports action, sports features, daily life, stories, portraits, contemporary issues, arts and entertainment and nature. Each exhibit is accompanied by an explanatory panel in both English and Spanish, listing the photojournalist, the news agency for which they work, the prize they won and the relevant background information.
The exhibition is not for the faint-hearted. Many photos feature distressing scenes from international news stories, such as the Russia-Georgia conflict or the Sichuan earthquake. It requires a certain degree of morbid fascination to stomach images of floating corpses, bleeding hands or a military boot resting on the face of a Kenyan man contorted with fear. This makes the photos all the more testament to the courage of the prize-winning photojournalists, who risk their own lives for the perfect shot.
The photos vary in tone, however. The arts and entertainment category ranges from the traditional tourism of an afternoon on a Baltic beach to its altogether more sinister counterpart at Birkenau concentration camp. Equally the contemporary issues pictured include persecuted Tanzanian albinos, transsexual prostitutes in Honduras, a victim of the rampant violence against women in Guatemala and homelessness in Mexico. These are provocative images, unsettling in their intrusion into a foreign other’s life. They offer a glimpse into another world courtesy of an intrepid lens.
The final shot in the exhibition is the winning photo, a black and white image by North American Anthony Suau for Time magazine. It depicts a police officer clutching a handgun as he wades through the debris of an abandoned house in Cleveland. The title is ‘US economy in crisis’, taking the vandalised house following eviction as emblematic of the country’s economic disarray which has dominated both national and international news over the course of the past year. Describing his experience shadowing Detective Robert Kale, Suau declared that “you never really knew what you would find…there was just this range of emotions which was as broad as you can imagine.”
They are powerful images which are on show, and some of the photos you may even recognise. I recall a Reuters image by Gleb Caranich of the Georgian war graced the cover of a British newspaper last summer. The photos in the exhibition provide a beguiling summary of the issues which sold papers in 2008. In some their merit stems from careful execution, testifying to a skillful photojournalist’s understanding of photographic technique and composition. Others impress with an incredible event immortalised on film, the successful result of a chance sighting and a camera to hand.
Above all, the exhibition’s charm derives from the many close-ups of individuals in remarkable situations. They humanise the headlines and translate facts into the emotive language of image. At times stark, at times moving, the World Press Photography exhibition is a fresh angle from which to view the life and times of the world we live in.
The World Press Photography exhibition is at the Centre Cultural Borges, Viamonte esq. San Martin until 4th October. Entry is $15. See http://www.ccborges.org.ar for more information.
