Silence, catastrophe, hope and pandemic: 10 winning postcards from World Press Photo 2021

The World Press Photo Award 2021 has announced the winners. These are atypical and at the same time moving photos of the year that changed the world: the pandemic has invaded the themes and the photographers have stood out, but there is everything. The winning photo? Is titled First hug in the pandemic and it’s danish Mads Nisse.

The postcard moves: Rosa Luzia Lunardi, 85, receives a hug from the nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza at the Viva Bem Residence in São Paulo, Brazil on August 5, 2020. In this way, a resident’s first hug in five months is immortalized.

“This iconic image of COVID-19 commemorates the most extraordinary moment in our lives everywhere,” he said. Kevin wy lee. The photo, which shows both “vulnerability, separation and survival”, is also a symbol of “hope”.

“For me, it’s a story of hope and love in the most difficult times,” says its author. Mads Nissen, photographer for the Danish newspaper Politics, which also won the first prize in the category “General information, single image”, thanks to the photo. Nissen had already won the World Press Photo 2015 with the image of a gay couple in Russia.

The Report of the Year winning series, a major new award introduced in 2019, tells stories of love affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was photographed by the Italian photographer. Antonio Faccilongo, in order to Getty Report.

For its part, Ernesto Benavides, freelance photographer working for the Agence France Presse (AFP) in Lima, he won second prize in the category “Current snapshots, reports”, with a series of images taken during the protests against the impeachment of the former Peruvian president Martin vizcarra in November.

The Mexican also stood out Ivan Macias in your image COVID-19 emergency personnel. With this photograph, Macías obtained the second place in the “Individual portrait” category. Captured on May 19, 2020, at the start of the health emergency, the injured face of a doctor is shown for the marks left by the mask and goggles after his shift ended at a COVID-19 hospital in Mexico City.

More than 74,000 images were submitted by some 4,300 photographers around the world, and 45 of them were nominated by judges, according to Amsterdam-based competition organizers. The awards ceremony took place online due to coronavirus restrictions. The photographer of AFP Yasuyoshi Chiba won the award for best photography of the year 2020, with the image of a young man reciting a poem among protesters in Sudan.

With information from AFP.

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