A haunting image of a grieving Palestinian woman embracing the body of her niece, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday.
The photograph taken by Mohammed Salem of the Reuters news agency shows Inas Abu Maamar cradling the body of five-year-old Saly, who was killed with her mother and sister when a missile hit their home in Khan Younis, south of Gaza, in October.
Salem was at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital on October 17 when he saw Abu Maamar, 36, sobbing and holding tightly to his niece’s shrouded body in the morgue.
The photograph was taken 10 days after the start of the current conflict, following the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel.
“It was a powerful and sad moment and I felt the image encapsulated the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said, citing World Press Photo.
“It’s a really moving image,” said Fiona Shields, president of the jury.
“Once you see it, it kind of sticks in your mind,” she said. “It functions as a kind of literal and metaphorical message about the horror and futility of conflict.”
“It’s an incredibly powerful argument for peace,” Shields added.
South Africa’s Lee-Ann Olwage, filming for GEO, won Story of the Year with an intimate portrait of a Malagasy family caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia.
“This story addresses an issue of universal healthcare through the lens of family and caregiving,” the judges said.
“The selection of images is composed with care and tenderness, reminding viewers of the love and closeness needed in times of war and aggression around the world,” they added.
Venezuelan Alejandro Cegarra won the Long Term Project Award for his vivid monochrome images of migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross Mexico’s southern border.
Shooting for The New York Times/Bloomberg, Cegarra’s own experience as a migrant “provided a sensitive, human-centered perspective that centers on the agency and resilience of migrants.”
In the Open Format, Ukrainian Julia Kochetova won with her website that “brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show the world what it is like to live with war as an everyday reality”.
The 2,024 award-winning photos were selected from 61,062 entries from 3,851 photographers from 130 countries.
The photos will be on display at De Nieuwe Kerk, a 15th-century church in the center of Amsterdam, until July 14.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
