World Press Photo regional winners announced
The regional winners of the 65th annual World Press Photo have recently been announced for 2022. Considered one of the preeminent competitions for the genre, it showcases the world's best photojournalism and photo documentary. Winners of the World Press Photo Contest were selected from 64,823 photographs and open format entries from 4,066 photographers across 130 countries.
A global jury decided on the 2022 regional winners, for each of the four categories; Singles, Stories, Long-Term Projects and Open Format.
Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo Foundation, commented about this year's contest: "It is exhilarating to see the way in which the new regional contest set up is producing the changes that we were hoping for. Changes that we believe will offer different perspectives on, and a deeper connection to, photojournalism and documentary photography from all over the world."
Matthew Abbott , a regular contibutor to The New York Times, was the only Australian recognized in Southeast Asia and Oceania region, taking out the Stories category with his series, Saving Forests with Fire, captured for National Geographic/Panos Pictures.
© Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures . A group of Nawarddeken women elders hunt for turtles with homemade tools on floodplains near Gunbalanya, Arnhem Land, Australia on 31 October 2021. They spent all day finding just two turtles, which are a popular delicacy. Soon the grass will be burned to make the hunt easier.. © Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures . Nawarddeken elder Conrad Maralngurra burns grass to protect the Mamadawerre community from late-season ‘wildfires’, in Mamadawerre, Arnhem Land, Australia, on 3 May 2021. The late-evening fire will die out naturally once the temperature drops and moisture levels rise. © Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures . A black kite (subspecies Affinis of Milvus migrans) flies above a cool-burn fire lit by hunters earlier in the day, in Mamadawerre, Arnhem Land, Australia, on 2 May 2021. The raptor, also known as a firehawk, is native to Northern and Eastern Australia, and hunts near active fires, snatching up large insects, small mammals, and reptiles as they flee the flames. Abbott's series explores how Indigenous Australians strategically burn land in a practice known as cool burning, in which fires move slowly, burn only the undergrowth, and remove the build-up of fuel that feeds bigger blazes.
© Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures . Stacey Lee (11, left) sets the bark of trees alight to produce a natural light source to help hunt for file snakes (Acrochordus arafurae), in Djulkar, Arnhem Land, Australia, on 22 July 2021. Regional Winners
Africa
Singles Sudan Protests – Faiz Abubakr Mohamed, SudanStories Afraid to go to School – Sodiq Adelakun Adekola, Nigeria, Agence France-Presse
Long-Term Projects The Zebu War – Rijasolo, Madagascar/France, Riva Press
Open Format The Longing of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken – Rehab Eldalil, Egypt
Honorable Mention Searching for Peace Amidst Chaos – Amanuel Sileshi, Ethiopia, Agence France-Presse
Mahmoud stands in his home in St. Catherine, South Sinai, Egypt, on 2 April 2019. Nora, Mahmoud’s cousin, embroidered his portrait. Africa, Open Format. © Rehab Eldalil. Security forces patrol the ruins of the village of Andranondambo, in southern Madagascar, on 1 June 2014. The village had been completely destroyed during attacks by dahalo zebu thieves from a neighboring village, Ambatotsivala. Africa, Long-Term Projects. © Rijasolo, Riva Press. Sandals belonging to kidnapped students remain lying on the ground at the Bethel Baptist High School, in Chikun, Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria, on 14 July 2021. Africa Stories. © Sodiq Adelakun Adekola, Agence France-Presse. A protester throws back a tear-gas canister that had been fired by security forces, during a march demanding an end to military rule, in Khartoum, Sudan, on 30 December 2021. Africa Singles. © Faiz Abubakr Mohamed. Asia
Singles Palestinian Children in Gaza – Fatima Shbair , Palestine, Getty Images
Stories The Cinema of Kabul – Bram Janssen , the Netherlands, The Associated Press
Long-Term Projects Boundaries: Human-Tiger Conflict – Senthil Kumaran , India
Open Format Blue Affair – Kosuke Okahara , Japan
Honorable Mention Endless War – Dar Yasin , India, The Associated Press
In India, Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) are considered endangered, with up to 3,000 surviving in the wild. Human settlement, cultivation, and urban development are encroaching on tigers’ natural habitat and reducing their prey base. Villages on the perimeters of tiger sanctuaries and reserves are often home to Indigenous communities, who depend on livestock, farming, or the forest for their livelihoods. Conflict arises when tigers kill livestock and occasionally humans, which although rare, usually occurs when angry groups surround tigers who have entered settlements. Here, Bhuthari, a fisherman, explains how he was attacked by a tiger while collecting crabs, in the forest buffer zone around the Sundarban Tiger Reserve, in a delta region of West Bengal, India, 4 December 2012. Asia, Long-Term Projects. © Senthil Kumaran. A ten-year-old male tiger lies tranquillised as it is shifted to a cage to be removed, after entering a village and killing cattle, close to the town of Valparai, near the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India, on 27 April 2012. Asia, Long-Term Projects. © Senthil Kumaran. Blue Affair is a contemplative experimental documentary film based on the photographer’s experiences of visiting Koza (officially Okinawa City), Japan, and how places and people revisit him in recurring dreams. The documentary is based on these dreams, and is composed of still images taken by Okahara in Koza over the course of three years, and narrated by the photographer. The video explores how the memories infiltrate dreams, and asks us to reconsider the relationship between dreams and lived reality. Asia, Open Format. © Kosuke Okahara. Europe
Singles Evia Island Wildfire – Konstantinos Tsakalidis, Greece, for Bloomberg News
Stories As Frozen Land Burns – Nanna Heitmann, Russia/Germany, Magnum Photos
Long-Term Projects Ukraine Crisis – Guillaume Herbaut, France, Agence VU’
Open Format The Book of Veles – Jonas Bendiksen, Norway
Honorable Mention M+T – Mary Gelman, Russia
The Book of Veles was published in April 2021 as a documentary project on the production of fake news in Veles, a provincial North Macedonian town which placed itself on the world map in 2016 as an epicenter for fake news production. Six months after the project's publication, Bendiksen revealed that it was a forgery. All the people portrayed are computer-generated 3D models. The backgrounds of the images were made by photographing empty spaces in Veles and then converted into 3D spaces. Europe, Open Format. © Jonas Bendiksen. Panayiota Kritsiopi cries out as a wildfire approaches her house in the village of Gouves, on the island of Evia, Greece, on 8 August 2021. Europe, Singles. © Konstantinos Tsakalidis for Bloomberg News. Photographed over 2013-2021, this project looks at the longer-term context leading to the 2022 war in Ukraine. Tensions between the east and west of Ukraine were exacerbated in 2014 when Kremlin-backed forces occupied the Crimean peninsula and separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk established self-proclaimed people’s republics, a status not officially recognized by most of the international community. Here, a decapitated statue of Lenin stands in Cheminots Park, Kotovsk, Ukraine, on 19 December 2013. The statue was destroyed by ultra-nationalists on the night of 8–9 December. Europe, Long-Term Projects. © Guillaume Herbaut Agence VU'. North and Central America
Singles Kamloops Residential School – Amber Bracken, Canada, for The New York Times
Stories The People Who Feed the United States – Ismail Ferdous, Bangladesh, Agence VU’
Long-Term Projects Political Year Zero – Louie Palu, Canada
Open Format The Flower of Time. Guerrero's Red Mountain – Yael Martínez, Mexico
Honorable Mention Amid High Mortality Rates, Black Women Turn to Midwives – Sarah Reingewirtz, United States, for Los Angeles Daily News and Southern California News Group
Pro-vaccination activists wearing beaked masks, similar to those worn by 17th-century doctors during the plague, seek to draw the attention of spectators around Capitol Hill to promote the message that refusing to be vaccinated will prolong the COVID-19 pandemic, on 25 March 2021. North and Central America, Long-Term Projects. National Guard soldiers rest inside the Capitol Building, Washington DC, USA, on 7 January 2021. The troops were called on following the 6 January invasion of the Capitol Building to protect lawmakers and the complex from further attack, and remained deployed until 24 May. North and Central America, Long-Term Projects. © Louie Palu. Mexico is the third-largest opium producer in the world, with half of the production being grown in its second-poorest state, Guerrero. The drug economy has transformed the social structure of the largely Indigenous farming communities which have turned to poppy cultivation as a means of survival. The photographer put scratches and pinpricks into prints of the photographs to represent trauma and the scratching of the poppy flower during opium extraction, while the color red represents drug violence and blood, but also life. This image depicts a poppy flower in Acatepec, Guerrero, Mexico, on 13 December 2020. Extracted opium gum from the poppy is turned into heroin in Mexico before being transported to the US and Canada. North and Central America, Open Format. © Yael Martínez. Mortality rates of Black women from perinatal complications are notably higher than for white women. Black women in the US can find it hard to trust the medical establishment, because of their experience of deep-running racism that may affect medical outcomes. In 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.9 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics. In addition, many Black women feel they are having unnecessary Cesarean sections when giving birth, and that they are unheard by their doctors. Some are turning instead to midwives. This project tells the story of Aysha-Samon Stokes, who found a Black midwife in her third trimester and gave birth to a healthy baby boy on Mother’s Day at a South Los Angeles Birthing Center. North and Central America, Honorable Mention. © Sarah Reingewirtz for Los Angeles Daily News and Southern California News Group. South America
Singles San Isidro Settlement Eviction – Vladimir Encina, Colombia
Stories The Promise – Irina Werning, Argentina, Pulitzer Center
Long-Term Projects Amazonian Dystopia – Lalo de Almeida, Brazil, for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures
Open Format Blood is a Seed – Isadora Romero, Ecuador
Honorable Mention A Portrait of Absence – Viviana Peretti, Italy
Blood is a Seed (La Sangre Es Una Semilla) questions the disappearance of seeds, forced migration, colonization, and the subsequent loss of ancestral knowledge. The video is composed of digital and film photographs, some of which were taken on expired 35mm film and later drawn on by Romero’s father. In a journey to their ancestral village of Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia, Romero explores forgotten memories of the land and crops and learns about her grandfather and great-grandmother who were ‘seed guardians' and cultivated several potato varieties, only two of which still mainly exist. South America, Open Format. © Isadora Romero. In August 2020, Antonella (12), who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, vowed to cut her long hair only when she could resume in-person classes at school, which had been suspended as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Antonella said she was offering up her most precious treasure in exchange for getting her school life back. Her hair was her identity. She said: “When I finally go back to school they will know I’m a different person, I feel like a different person.” She cut her hair on 25 September 2021, on the weekend before she returned to classes. Here, Antonella yawns while studying in bed, in her room at home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 29 July 2021. She says she feels a lack of motivation studying at home, and often studies in bed as she doesn’t feel like getting up. South America, Stories. © Irina Werning, Pulitzer Center. The Amazon rainforest is under great threat, as deforestation, mining, infrastructural development and exploitation of natural resources gain momentum under President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmentally regressive policies. Since 2019, devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has been running at its fastest pace in a decade. An area of extraordinary biodiversity, the Amazon is home to more than 350 different Indigenous groups. Exploitation of the Amazon has a number of social impacts, particularly on Indigenous communities who are forced to deal with significant degradation of their environment, as well as their way of life. Here, stray dogs stare at meat hanging in a butcher's shop in Vila da Ressaca, an area previously mined for gold but now almost completely abandoned, in Altamira, Pará, Brazil, on 2 September 2013. South America, Long-Term Projects. © Lalo de Almeida for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures. Southeast Asia and Oceania
Singles Slingshots – Anonymous, for The New York Times
Stories Saving Forests with Fire – Matthew Abbott, Australia, for National Geographic/Panos Pictures
Long-Term Projects Haze – Abriansyah Liberto, Indonesia
Open Format The Will to Remember – Charinthorn Rachurutchata , Thailand
Honorable Mention Uprising in Myanmar – Ta Mwe, Myanmar, Sacca Photo
This project documents the first month of protest in Yangon, Myanmar, after the military coup on 1 February 2021. Myanmar’s military carried out a coup deposing its democratically elected government and shattered a decade of political and social development. Over the course of the first week of the new dictatorship, protests began to grow, from small acts of defiance to a nationwide uprising that protesters began referring to as the Spring Revolution. The military met protests with deadly force and mass detention. The photographer is using an alias for protection. Honourable mention, Uprising in Myanmar, Ta Mwe, Sacca Photo. Protesters use slingshots and other homemade weapons in a clash with security forces in Yangon, Myanmar. Southeast Asia and Oceania, Singles. Anonymous for The New York Times. Every regional winner of the Contest receives a monetary prize of €1,000 ($1,465 AUD), along with inclusion in the annual worldwide exhibition and annual yearbook.
You can read more about the jury and judging process here or read the jury report here , and see more of the hundred plus winning images on the Contest website. The global winners will be announced on 7 April.
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