PHOTOGRAPHY AND JOURNALISM: THE WINNERS OF WORLD PRESS PHOTO 2017
The exhibition of World Press Photo 2017 will be held in Rome at Palazzo delle Esposizioni from the 28th of April to the 28th of May 2017 as the world premiere exhibition together with Seville and Lisbon. The World Press Photo is one of the most important awards in the field of photojournalism. Every year, for over 60 years, an independent jury of international experts, is called upon to express themselves on thousands of requests sent to the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam by photojournalists from around the world.
The 2017 contest drew entries from around the world: 5,034 photographers from 125 countries submitted 80,408 images. The jury gave prizes in eight categories to 45 photographers from 25 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Syria, New Zealand, Turkey, UK, and USA.
©Burhan Ozbilici_The Associated Press
The World Press Photo of the Year honors the photographer whose visual creativity and skills made a picture that captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance in the last year.
Burhan Ozbilici’s picture–which also won first prize in the Spot News Stories category–shows how Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, a 22-year-old off-duty police officer, assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, at an art exhibition in Ankara, Turkey, on 19 December 2016. Altıntaş wounded three other people before being killed by officers in a shootout. Ozbilici is a staff photographer for The Associated Press, based in Istanbul. Mary F. Calvert, member of the jury, spoke about the winning photograph: “It was a very very difficult decision, but in the end we felt that the picture of the Year was an explosive image that really spoke to the hatred of our times. Every time it came on the screen you almost had to move back because it’s such an explosive image and we really felt that it epitomizes the definition of what the World Press Photo of the Year is and means.”
The exhibition of the World Press Photo 2017 is not only a gallery of stunning images, but it is an historical document that allows us to relive the crucial events of our time. Its international character, the hundreds of thousands of people that visit the exhibition every year in the world, are the demonstration of how the images transcend cultural and language differences to reach very high and immediate levels of communication.
World Press Photo 2017, promoted by Roma Capitale - Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, is hosted by Palazzo delle Esposizioni and organized in collaboration with 10b Photography, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam.
The World Press Photo Foundation, founded in 1955, is a nonprofit independent and international institution for photojournalism. The World Press Photo is supported by the National Postcode Lottery and sponsored worldwide by Canon.
10b Photography, partner of World Press Photo Foundation, is a multi-purpose center dedicated entirely to professional photography. It aims to bring to Rome and to other Italian cities the largest and most prestigious competition of photojournalism in the world.