Mohammed Salem of Reuters won the esteemed 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award for his shot of a Palestinian woman in the Gaza Strip holding her five-year-old niece’s body on Thursday.
On October 17, 2023, the photo was shot at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, where relatives were looking for loved ones who had died in the Israeli bombing of the Palestinian territory.
The winning photo from Salem shows 36-year-old Inas Abu Maamar sobbing as she holds Saly’s sheet-covered body in the hospital morgue.
“With humility, Mohammed accepted the news of his WPP prize, stating that while this is not a picture to celebrate, he respects the acknowledgment and the chance to share it with a larger audience,” Reuters’s International Editor for Images & Video, Rickey Rogers, said at a ceremony in Amsterdam.
Standing in front of the picture at the Nieuwe Kerk in the Dutch capital, Rogers stated, “He hopes with this honor that the world will become even more sensitive of the human impact of war, especially on children.”
The Amsterdam-based World Press Photo Foundation stated at the announcement of its annual prizes that it was critical to acknowledge the risks that reporters covering conflicts face.
It stated that since the Palestinian militant group assaulted southern Israel on October 7 and Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza in retaliation, 99 journalists and media personnel had died covering the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“Press and documentary photographers around the world frequently work in dangerous conditions,” stated Joumana El Zein Khoury, the executive director of the organization.
“The number of journalists slain this past year reached an almost all-time high due to the deaths in Gaza. To demonstrate to the world the humanitarian effects of the conflict, it is critical to acknowledge the trauma they have endured.”
39-year-old Salem is a Palestinian who has been employed for Reuters since 2003. In the 2010 World Press Photo Competition, he was also the winner of a prize.
“Composed with care and respect, delivering at once a figurative and real view into unspeakable sorrow,” was how the jury described Salem’s winning photograph from 2024.
“I thought the photo captured the overall idea of what was going on in the Gaza Strip,” Salem stated upon the photo’s initial release in November.
“People were disoriented, scurrying around, and eager to learn the fate of their loved ones, and this woman caught my eye as she was holding the body of the little girl and refused to let go.”
Days prior to him taking the shot, Salem’s wife had given birth to their child.
Head of photography at Guardian News & Media and jury member Fiona Shields described the image as “profoundly touching.”
With 61,062 entries submitted by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries, the jury chose the winning images.
With photos showing dementia in Madagascar, GEO photographer Lee-Ann Olwage of South Africa got the story of the year award.
Alejandro Cegarra of Venezuela won the long-term projects category for The New York TimesThe Bloomberg’s Two Walls” series.
Julia Kochetova, a photographer from Ukraine, took home the open format prize for her project “War is Personal,” which combined photography, poetry, music, and audio in a documentary style to depict the war in her nation.
(Reuters)
