The image of a grieving Palestinian woman holding her granddaughter, killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip, has won the World Press Photo. Reuters reporter Mohammed Salem’s photo shows Inas Abu Maamar cradling the body of her five-year-old niece, Saly, who was killed along with her mother and sister by a missile that hit their home in Khan Younis in October.
The photo was taken 10 days after the conflict began. “It was a powerful and sad moment and I felt that the image summed up in a broad sense what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said. “It’s a really deeply moving image,” said jury president Fiona Shields. «Once you see it, it sticks in your mind. It’s like a kind of literal and metaphorical message about the horror and futility of conflict” and makes “an incredibly powerful argument for peace,” she added. South African Lee-Ann Olwage, for GEO magazine, won the award Story of the year with its intimate portrait of a Malagasy family living with an elderly parent suffering from dementia. “This story addresses a universal health issue through the lens of family and care,” the judges said.
“The series of images is composed with warmth and tenderness, reminding audiences of the love and intimacy needed in times of war and aggression around the world,” they added. Venezuelan photographer Alejandro Cegarra won the long-term project award with his black-and-white images of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross Mexico’s southern border, taken for the New York Times/Bloomberg. Having had experience as a migrant himself, Cegarra “offered a sensitive and human-centered perspective,” highlighting the resilience of migrants, according to the jury. In the “open format” category, Ukrainian Julia Kochetova won with her website that «combines photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it means to live with war as an everyday reality». The winning photos in 2024 they were selected from 61,062 applications submitted by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries. The photos will be exhibited in the Nieuwe Kerk church in Amsterdam until July 14th.