In Pictures
Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her five-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 17, 2023. Reuters photographer Mohammad Salem was at the hospital morgue, where residents were going to search for missing relatives. He won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award for this image. [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]Published On 18 Apr 202418 Apr 2024
A haunting image of a grieving Palestinian woman embracing the body of her little niece, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year Award on Thursday.
The photograph taken by the Reuters news agency’s Mohammed Salem shows Inas Abu Maamar cradling the body of five-year-old Saly, who was killed with her mother and sister when a missile hit their home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in October.
Salem was in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital on October 17 when he saw Abu Maamar, 36, sobbing and tightly holding the shrouded body of her niece in the morgue.
The 2024 World Press Photo of the Year is of Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embracing the body of her five-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis [File: Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
The picture was taken 10 days after the start of the current conflict, following the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel.
“It was a powerful and a sad moment and I felt the picture sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” World Press Photo quoted Salem as saying.
“It is a really profoundly affecting image,” said Fiona Shields, jury chairwoman.
“Once you’ve seen it, it’s kind of seared in your mind,” she said. “It works as a kind of literal and metaphorical message really about the horror and futility of conflict.”
“It’s an incredibly powerful argument for peace,” Shields added.
South Africa’s Lee-Ann Olwage, shooting for GEO, won the Story of the Year Award with an intimate portrayal of a Malagasy family caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia.
“This story tackles a universal health issue through the lens of family and care,” the judges said.
“The selection of images is composed with warmth and tenderness reminding viewers of the love and closeness necessary in a time of war and aggression worldwide,” they added.
Venezuelan Alejandro Cegarra won the Long-Term Project Award with his vivid monochrome images of migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross Mexico’s southern border.
Shooting for The New York Times/Bloomberg, Cegarra’s own experience as a migrant “afforded a sensitive human-centred perspective that centres on the agency and resilience of migrants”.
In the Open Format, Ukraine’s Julia Kochetova won with her website that “brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality”.
The 2024 award-winning pictures were selected from 61,062 entries by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries.
The photos are on exhibit at De Nieuwe Kerk, a 15th-century church in the centre of Amsterdam, until July 14.
A series titled The Two Walls won the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award and shows Ever Sosa (centre) carrying his daughter on his shoulders as they cross the Suchiate River from Guatemala to Mexico, joining a caravan of 3,000 migrants and asylum seekers attempting to get to the United States, Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, January 20, 2023. [Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP]The Two Walls shows a migrant walking atop a freight train known as ‘The Beast’. Migrants and asylum seekers lacking the financial resources to pay a smuggler often resort to using cargo trains to reach the United States border. This mode of transportation is very dangerous. Over the years, hundreds have fallen onto the tracks and have been killed or maimed, Piedras Negras, Mexico, October 8, 2023. [Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP]The Two Walls shows Carlos Mendoza, a Venezuelan migrant, crossing the Rio Grande River to seek asylum in the United States, Piedras Negras, Mexico, October 7, 2023. [Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP]The Two Walls shows migrants using a homemade ladder to climb a section of the border wall with the help of a smuggler, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 1, 2021. [Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP]The Two Walls shows the De Coto family posing for a portrait aboard ‘The Beast’ while heading to Ciudad Juarez. This photo was taken three days before the expiration of Title 42, a US COVID-19 prevention measure that in effect allowed the deportation of migrants without reviewing asylum claims. Since 2020, there have been more than two million expulsions of migrants by US Customs and Border Protection under Title 42, Samalayuca, Mexico, May 8, 2023. [Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times/Bloomberg/World Press Photo via AP]This image is part of a series titled Valim-babena which won the World Press Photo Story of the Year Award and shows Odliatemix Rafaraniriana, 5 (left), Joeline (Fara) Rafaraniriana, 41, (centre) and Dada Paul Rakotazandriny, 91 (right) walking to church on a Sunday morning in Mandrosoa Ivato, Antananarivo, Madagascar, March 12, 2023. [Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP]Valim-babena shows Joeline (Fara) Rafaraniriana watching her father Dada Paul Rakotazandriny cleaning fish at home on a Sunday afternoon. A typical Sunday consists of the family attending church in the morning and spending time together in the afternoon. Fara works during the week and as the sole provider and carer for her daughter and father struggles to manage all her responsibilities in the absence of assistance by her siblings who live close by, March 12, 2023. [Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP]Valim-babena shows Dada Paul Rakotazandriny, who is living with dementia, and his granddaughter, Odliatemix Rafaraniriana, getting ready for church at his home in Antananarivo, Madagascar, March 12, 2023. [Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP]Valim-babena shows Joeline (Fara) Rafaraniriana and her daughter Odliatemix Rafaraniriana laying together on the bed they share with Dada Paul Rakotazandriny in their home in Mandrosoa Ivato, Antananarivo, Madagascar. Fara is the sole provider for the family of three and struggles to balance her time between caring for her father, work and spending time with her daughter, March 12, 2023. [Lee-Ann Olwage/Geo/World Press Photo via AP]This image is part of a series titled War is Personal and won the World Press Photo Open Format Award. It shows the training of conscripts of the 68th brigade in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, not far from the front line. The 68th brigade recently liberated Blagodatne village during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The instructors came from the United States, working for the NGO ‘Saber’. Amid tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and an effective stalemate that has lasted for months, there are no signs of peace on the horizon for Russia’s war in Ukraine. While news media updates its audience with statistics and maps, and international attention drifts elsewhere, the photographer has created a personal website that brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality. [Julia Kochetova/Der Spiegel/World Press Photo via AP]War is Personal shows a stabilisation point near Bakhmut, Ukraine, of the 5th assault brigade and the 77th brigade. The Hospitallers, a volunteer battalion of combat medics, are helping here. [Julia Kochetova/Der Spiegel/World Press Photo via AP]War is Personal shows a sunflower field with signs of artillery parking nearby. [Julia Kochetova/Der Spiegel/World Press Photo via AP]War is Personal shows a night in Druzhkivka, Donetsk region. [Julia Kochetova/World Press Photo via AP]
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