For the second year in a row, World Press Photo’s judges gave their top prize to an image from the contemporary issues category, bypassing news images from the conflict in
Ukraine, the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and protests in Turkey.
Mads Nissen’s photograph of two Russian gay men embracing was named the World Press Photo of the Year for 2014 in Amsterdam on Thursday. The winning image is part of a photo essay on the effects of an anti-gay
law passed in Russia in 2013. Mr. Nissen is a staff photographer for the Danish newspaper Politiken and is represented by Panos Pictures.
In last year’s contest, John Stanmeyer’s photograph of African migrants in Djibouti trying to capture a faint cellphone signal was named the top photo of 2013.
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The World Press Photo Contest
Winners from past contests have included John Stanmeyer, Paul Hansen, Samuel Aranda, and Jodi Bieber.
The chair of the jury this year was Michele McNally, the director of photography and an assistant managing editor at The New York Times. She said on Wednesday that this year’s winning photo was a subtle image and “very tender.”
The choice of Mr. Nissen’s photograph was in some ways indicative of the jury’s desire to make a statement about the future of photography, Ms. McNally said.
“Throughout the judging, as we looked at pictures, our mantra became: ‘This is what photojournalism is, but this is what photojournalism will be,’ ” she added.
Donald Weber, a member of the jury, said that that the winning photo represented a “turning point in the industry” and that it would engage a global audience beyond photographers. He also contrasted the winning image of “a daily life moment” with the need “to go see the exotic.”
The winner, Mr. Nissen, often covers news events, and he was in Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital on the bloodiest days of the protest movement last winter, and in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis this past fall.
Mr. Nissen said he had a “great deal of respect for what photojournalists do.” But, he added, “photography is not just about seeing the world, it’s also about questioning yourself.”
The story of his winning photograph is not only about homophobia and the “brave young gay activists” who fight it, he said. “In the end it’s about love — the love between two people.”
Patrick Baz of Agence France-Presse, who has 30 years’ experience photographing war and who was also a juror, felt a sense of urgency about the winning photo. “I need newcomers to understand that you don’t have to go to war, be elbow to elbow with a dozen photographers doing the same thing, and complain later that no one is buying your work,” he said. “Photographers can always find a story right across the street.”
This year’s World Press Photo contest was similar to last year’s in that many of the images that reached the second-to-last round of judging were disqualified by the jury for excessive post-processing. After examination by independent experts, 20 percent of the images that reached that round were eliminated by the jury because of significant addition or subtraction to the content of the image, said Lars Boering, the newly appointed managing director of World Press Photo.
“It seems some photographers can’t resist the temptation to aesthetically enhance their images during post-processing, either by removing small details to ‘clean up’ an image, or sometimes by excessive toning that constitutes a material change to the image,” he said. “Both types of retouching clearly compromise the integrity of the images.”
Many of the images that might have been expected to win were no longer in contention, several jurors said.
“It was debilitating to many jury members,” Ms. McNally said, “because works that you know and like could not be judged.”
The jurors were shocked when the doctored photos were presented to them by experts, according to Mr. Baz. “There was silence,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that some of the biggest names in photography did this — people who are in the pantheon.”
Bulent Kilic of Agence France-Presse was awarded first place in spot news singles for his photo of a girl wounded during clashes between riot police officers and protesters in Turkey. Mr. Kulic also placed third in the same category with an image of an airstrike on Islamic State militants near the Turkish border in Syria. Tyler Hicks of The New York Times took second place for an image of a man carrying a dying child after Israeli ordnance struck a beach in Gaza City in July.
Jérôme Sessini of Magnum Photos won both first and second place in spot news stories, with two photo essays from Ukraine. The first was from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 disaster in July, and the other on the end of the Independence Square protests in Kiev.
The winning photo in the general news singles category was also from Ukraine, taken by Sergei Ilnitsky of European Pressphoto Agency after a mortar attack in Donetsk.
Pete Muller won the general news story category for his coverage of Ebola in West Africa. Glenna Gordon took second place with her photos of the belongings of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, which appeared on Lens in May. Sergey Ponomarev was awarded third place for his photos of the Gaza conflict for The New York Times.
Darcy Padilla’s 21-year project on a homeless woman won the long-term project award. In the contemporary issues story category, Giovanni Troilo of Luz Photo took first prize, Giulio Di Sturco came in second and Tomas van Houtryve came in third. Michele Palazzi of Italy won the top prize for daily life stories.
Cai Sheng Xiang of China came in first for daily life singles, with a picture for the Chengdu Economic Daily. Sofia Valiente of The Clewiston News in Florida, which has a circulation of 7,500, won for portrait stories.
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