The World Press Photo 2024 exhibition is much more than the moving winning ‘photo of the year’ of a grieving Palestinian woman in Gaza

A major competition like World Press Photo cannot do without a figurehead, and so one of the tens of thousands of submitted photos is declared World Press Photo of the Year. The announcement is accompanied by worldwide publicity, often followed by debate about the (in)correctness of the jury choice or its motivation. This is also the case this year, with the award of the photo by the Palestinian photographer Mohammed Salem. For Reuters he took the moving photo of a Palestinian woman in Gaza clutching the body of her 5-year-old niece who was killed in Khan Younis.

Salem’s photo has been called a contemporary Pieta, and anyone who sees the monumental print at the WPP exhibition in the religion-saturated Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam will understand the reference to Christian iconography – it is reminiscent of Mary mourning with the body of Jesus. There were also grumblings about the allegedly Christian (and therefore Western) inspired choice for a photo that so emphatically refers to art history.

There is something to be said against that reasoning. It presupposes a Western view on the part of the jury, while its composition – thanks to the successful pursuit of the Amsterdam-based WPP organization for representativeness in both the entries and the assessment process – testifies to great international and cultural diversity. Certainly not people who quickly fall into the trap of visual Western clichés, riding on the inescapable emotion that the Pieta evokes.

When looking at Salem’s man-sized photo in the church, I realized that the association with the Pieta says a lot about the viewers, much less about the jury, and even less about the photographer, whether or not he was guided by Christian iconography. To put it bluntly, with apologies for the graphic language: how many other options are there for a grieving adult, regardless of origin and culture, to cherish a recently deceased child in a final, loving embrace? It is a primal attitude that preceded iconography. Just as the universal appeal of the tender female breast was probably seen and felt long before the Bible Song of Solomon longingly sounded: ‘Let your breasts be like bunches of the vine’.

Icons owe their untouchable status – in addition to phenomenal artistic qualities – also to the fact that they refer to primal emotions. It seems to me that Salem’s photo does not need Christian imagery at all as a vehicle to touch the heart. And that the similarity noted in the comments between the Gazan woman and Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s also reveals something of Western reflexes.

In the eternal battle for media attention, it is understandable and unfortunate that the annual WPP spectacle is often limited in publicity to that one photo. There are several images in the exhibition that would easily deserve the title of World Press Photo of the Year. On average, the 2024 edition is considerably stronger than many previous ones. Despite the climate crisis and the major armed conflicts in Gaza/Israel and Ukraine, it also offers hopeful perspectives. Who, by dividing the world into regions during judging, come from almost all continents.

In this way, the German photographer Vincent Haiges brings together the drama of war and the joy at its end in one photo. He captured the moment when a 24-year-old rebel army fighter in Ethiopia’s Tigray province is welcomed by his mother for the first time after a long absence. The man joined the Tigray Defense Forces in 2021 without his parents’ knowledge, losing a leg in the bloody fighting, a month before a ceasefire came into effect at the end of 2022. He underwent lengthy rehabilitation and was fitted with a prosthesis, after which he returned to his family for the first time. It’s wonderful how the euphoria of reunion and the pain of an irreparably damaged life merge here.

The depressing series that you still want to watch because of their great urgency includes: Afghanistan on the Edge by Iranian photographer Ebrahim Noroozi. He was among the many Afghans who are barely surviving under the Taliban’s reign of terror, after prolonged drought and failed harvests, after severe earthquakes and without foreign aid, without significant prospects. Noroozi’s photo of a few children staring with large, incredulous (or are they greedy?) eyes at the apple that their veiled mother has managed to beg for is telling. As if the boys are witnessing a miracle. A dark, ghostly image.

Two series on migration from Africa offer new, albeit bitter, insights into the phenomenon that dominates political agendas worldwide. Brazilian Felipe Dana and Renata Brito tell stories in their multimedia project produced for AP Adrift (with photos, video and graphics) about their two-year investigation into 43 Mauritanians whose boat became adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. They tried to reach the Canary Islands, the gateway to Europe, but were carried away by ocean currents to the Caribbean island of Tobago. There the ship was found full of corpses and the authorities used forensic research to determine their origin.

Using items of clothing and personal belongings such as mobile phones, in conversations with (still uncertain) stragglers, correspondence with authorities and young men who have previously attempted life-threatening crossings, the two journalists outline the motives of the migrants and the enormous, often fatal risks they take to achieve their dreams.

One of the migrants who barely survived shipwreck and starvation on his own says that ultimately it was not the death itself that scared him most, but the chance that his body would remain missing for a hundred years for his relatives. In any case, Dana and Brito were able to offer the small comfort of certainty to the relatives of one of the Mauritanians who washed ashore. After consultation with the family, they had strong suspicions that a striped shirt could be linked to a young man, they sent DNA material from his aunt to Tobago. From there eventually came the confirmation: ‘We regret to inform you that…’ A moving narrative form that is captivating due to its personal approach.

The second inspiring project on the causes of migration is The Escape by the Tunisian photographer Zied Ben Romdhane. Strictly speaking, his extensive series in black and white is not about migration, but it does touch on it: he zooms in on the hopelessness of the young generations of Tunisians, whose lack of economic and social prospects is often the driving force behind the crossing to Europe .

With dilapidated, desolate apartment buildings, polluted sites and lakes, a population in poverty and neglect, Romdhane’s photos show mass unemployment, underdevelopment, stagnation. But he also shows that the young people are by no means dull. We see their friendships and their mutual warmth, playing football together and also, in beautiful portraits, their pride and mutual solidarity.

The exhibition thus offers a beautiful and balanced overview of world news and the courageous efforts of photojournalists who often risk their own lives to unearth impressive human stories. A memorial has been erected in a chapel of the Nieuwe Kerk for the 99 journalists and media professionals who were murdered in 2023 because of their work. They have been added to the verified list of 1,553 journalists killed since 1992. A depressing list, which we can also regard as an encouragement to stand up for journalism when potentates at home or abroad come under fire.