Swedish photographer Paul Hansen wins 56th World Press Photo

From the pages of the BJP

World Press Photo of the Year 2012’s winning image by Paul Hansen, Sweden, Dagens Nyheter. Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her big brother Muhammad, who soon was to be four years old, were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike on Monday evening. Their father, Fouad, was also killed. Their mother is in intensive care at Al-Shifa Hospital. In accordance with their religion, the dead are buried quickly. The badly mangled body of Fouad is put on a stretcher and his brothers carry his dead children to the mosque for the burial ceremony. When darkness fell over Gaza on this day, at least 26 new victims were to be buried. That makes the total more than 140 dead so far since the beginning of the bombardment. Approximately half of the dead are women and children. The picture was taken on 20 November 2012 in Gaza City, Palestinian Territories.

“The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children. It’s a picture I will not forget,” says Mayu Mohanna, a jury member at this year’s World Press Photo photojournalism contest. In the image, two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her three-year-old brother Muhammad are being taken to a mosque for the burial ceremony, after they were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. “Their father’s body is carried behind on a stretcher [and] their mother was put in intensive care,” says the Amsterdam-based organisation. “The picture was made on 20 November 2012 in Gaza City, Palestinian Territories.”….more by Olivier Laurent here

 The winning image was selected from 103,481 images submitted by 5,666 photographers from 124 countries. Hansen recently won First Place in the Pictures of the Year International competition in the Photographer of the Year – Newspaper category.

World Press Photo Awards 2011

For over 55 years the World Press Photo contest has encouraged the highest standards in photojournalism.

The contest creates a bridge linking the professionals with the general public. As the announcement of the winners makes headlines around the world, so the inspirational role of photojournalism is highlighted to an audience of hundreds of millions.

All the prize-winning photographs are assembled into an exhibition that travels to 45 countries over the course of a year, and published in our yearbook. Over two million people go to a hundred different venues to see the images, and our yearbook is published in seven languages and distributed worldwide.

The World Press Photo Contest is an annual competition, which is comprised of two contests: a photo contest and a multimedia contest. For each contest, an international jury looks for the best photographs or multimedia productions from the past calendar year. Details about the photo and multimedia contests, as well as names of the contest judges, are announced in October/November. The contests open to entries in December.

The photo contest judging begins at the end of January and the winners are announced in the second week of February. The multimedia contest judging and the announcement of winners take place in March. The annual Awards Days, a celebration of the prizewinners, takes place in Amsterdam at the end of April or beginning of May.

See all the winning entries here