World Press Photo Of The Year. Discuss.

Tim Hetherington, UK, for Vanity Fair
American soldier resting at bunker, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 16 September

The best and worst thing about World Press Photo is that it elevates one photograph above all others. Call it an act of academic nonsense, but we always look forward to the announcement and the inevitable debates that follow.

What do you think of this year's winner? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. (And don't forget to spend a few minutes browsing the winners gallery to see more of the work that WPP recognized this year.)

Comments

[toney smith]

dark, blurry, slightly incomprehensible and borderline boring

February 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

The World Press awards has revealed its winners for 2008. As expected, the picture of Britney Spears having her head shaved off won for the best image of Arts and entertainment. Or wait..it did not. Once again, The World Press has shown its complete disrespect for the world of news in favor of an overly intellectualized vision of the world. A bit as if the judges, once gathered in a room, behind closed doors, had said: “lets kill photojournalism a little bit more this year”

The photojournalism intelligentsia has voted. A closed group of overly self adoring and painfully egocentric intellectuals whose vision of a news photography is closer to the likes of ICP than the masses. They look for the creative touch, the Holga/lensbaby effect, the “je ne sais quoi” that makes a news photograph a work of art. They over think photography to an excess and seem to look for the Picasso rather than the human touch. They do not believe that an news image can be good, if doesn’t carry the touch of a creative artifact.

This years big winner is a blurry image of a tired soldier. Although not taken in a combat situation, and probably because of low light, it is slightly blurry. I don’t care for such poorly taken image. What is so wrong about reality that it has to be altered and given the highest prize in photojournalism ?

Sadly enough, we see the same intelligentsia controlling most of the major prizes worldwide and spitting out the same type of winners. These judges are all friends with each other and spend the rest of the year over analyzing images as if they where reading a Kafka novel. It has to be dark, blurry, slightly incomprehensible and borderline boring.

No wonder photojournalism is dying. Once again, the sports images of this year seem to be the real winners. Amazing images of incredible situation. The rest is dark, so dark. Not just dark subjects, but simply slightly underexposed or taken with low light. The less you see, the more you can imagine. The image is good for what is not there, so you can fill in the blanks yourself. Even the Nature category is full of blood and sadness because a happy image, according to these judges, cannot be a good image.

Lets no forget that politics, for example, has no place in the World Press. We marvel at the John F Kennedy images in the Oval office yet there is not one image of world leaders in action. Between the French election last year, the changing of guards in England and the US election, you cannot tell me there was no great images.

It is a little bit as if, outside of Africa ( Kenya, mostly), Afghanistan and Iraq, the rest of the world stood still. Or, maybe it was not favorable for a nice moody b&w panoramic Holga image. You can almost hear the judges discuss the lightness of being, quoting “The human condition”, while sipping their warm cappuccinos.” This image is so Nietzscheen, isn’t it?”

Certainly not a good year for the World Press. Even more, because, once again, they refused to acknowledge multimedia, one of the most powerful tool of today’s photojournalism. Or, in a socially driven internet, they do not have a people’s choice, where image consumers could vote.

No, they prefer to remain in photojournalism Medieval ages, taking comfort in congratulating themselves for picking the least interesting images possible as to prove there is more to photojournalism than the reporting of the news. If anything, this, and other awards of it kind, are killing photojournalism. They create the false impression that this is the standard to achieve.

If you have time to waste and have really nothing else to do, here are the winners :

World Press

PS: At least I was right about John Moore’s images who, by the way, truly deserved this prize.

[Robert Goddyn]

I think it is not a photo but a part of a video because TIM HETHERINGTON is filming a lot for ABC Press and if you go to his site you see he is a Video 1# guy and photographer 2# and this is why the images is not sharp and WPP is a Photo Contest and not a Video Still Contest this a mistake of WPP.

[StMarc]

As an illustration that War Is Hell, it's not bad, not bad at all.

However, EVERYBODY FREAKING KNOWS THAT WAR IS HELL. It's a fine photo, but the "News" part is a little shaky.

M

[Benjamin Rasmussen]

You are angry that an image of Britney Spears did not win a World Press Award? That is the attitude that is killing photojournalism. That images of western political and entertainment elite are the most important events in the world shows an incredibly ethnocentric world view.

I think what World Press shows is how far behind the US is in terms photojournalism. It is still living by the "f8 and be there" mantra and don't realize that the readers are becoming far more visually advanced today. They are influenced by what they see in advertising and movies, yet when they open a newspaper it looks like it is still 1980.

-Benjamin

[Former World Press Winner]

A good friend of mine who had won quite a few
photojournalism contests once quipped " A
different set of judges, a different set of winners."
How true. And congratulations to the New World
Press Premier Tim Hetherington.

Over the last decade I have become somewhat
confused over what the World Press Photo judges
are aiming for? If one reads the charter of the
contest, the Premier winner is supposed to
represent excellent photojournalism on a story
that had a global impact for that year. It was with
this in mind that I was astounded that no
images were selected from the incredible images
from Sept. 11, 2001. Instead, a beautiful image
of a dead Afghan boy won that year, from a story
about the Afghan famine, which was not even a
major news event for that year. I felt the image
that won that year was a terrific image, but I
feel it didn't qualify under the terms of the
charter. Hetherington's image is much the same
way. The other images from his story are strong
as well, but in ways, their appeal are what I call
the "Vietnam effect". Since Vietnam was one of
the premier photojournalism wars, the closer
one resembles that aura the more the judges
identify with the image. David Turnley's Gulf
War winner (1991) is representative of this, but in
my opinion it deserved to win due to the importance
of the story and the rendering of the moment.
Is an out of focus shot of a soldier brushing his
brow in a bunker more important than the
assassination of Bhutto? Evidently the judges thought
so.

[Freakie]

I like quite a lot the WPP winner pic but I would never give a WPP pic of the year to an american toy soldier!! And is not even clear whether the soldier was just resting after jogging or after a battle. Am I the only one fed up of Afghanistan and Iraq and the american soldiers?? I mean, the americans send soldiers to many countries just to keep their strategical interests (and don't forget that they kill a lot of civilians) under the excuse of fighting against terrorism and then the photographers get prizes for showing how the "poor" soldiers are suffering...
Apparently the rest of the world is not existing for the WPP jury. To me they are just promoting that if you want to make a career as photojournalist you must go to Iraq and Afghanistan embedded with the american soldiers.
I reckon also is a bit suspicious that VII got several awards. Concretely the two of Benjamin Lowy are a joke!!! I wonder whether it had something to do with having Gary Knight as president of the jury.

I also think they should create also a new category for the best heavy photoshop well done, like Zizola's work. I think he got the prize cause the amazing photoshop. I have nothing against using photoshop as much as you want, but I really don't see the story behind the plastic appearance of those pics. Under my taste is excesive but if they jury likes it is ok, I am just against giving a prize for striking images thanks to the photoshop and not so much for the story that is behind that.

Cheers

[photographer]

Tim's wining photograph is touching and makes an impact on the viewer ; he should be congratulated for his hard work and achievements. For those who believe in "Blood and Glory", here is the answer ; you don't have to be a 'war photographer' , running in frenzy from one conflict to the next , in order to produce a first class photograph like Tim !

[Thomas Pickard]

Low light; slightly blurry...It actually looks more like a painted canvas than a photo.

The saddest thing about the WPP contest is that it seems to charter so much misery and bloodshed in the main press categories.

Maybe the world needs that?

As for the sports photos - just AMAZING.