Moments in our turbulent present, to pull us in and make us think and feel: 2021's World Press Photo Awards
Politiken/Panos Pictures, 05 August, 2020
The paradox of the single striking news photo - which the World Press Photo Awards celebrate every year - is that’s it’s the ultimate hard edit of a complex historical moment. We can only guess at what comes before and after - although as you’ll see below, in this selection from the winners of best photo for 2021, the WPPA really try to put each picture in a news context.
Yet at the same time, these pictures allow you to dwell on humans in history - some of it their own making, some of it not - and burrow your attention into the details of each climactic moment. Maybe we develop a quality of attention, and empathy, that the endless flow of audiovisual material discourages.
Sourced from 2020, it’s no surprise that these pictures dwell on American politics, Covid conditions, unpredictable climate, and the Beirut explosion.
More from all the categories and winners at the World Press Photo website.
The First Embrace/Mads Nissen [Picture of the Year, top of blog]
Rosa Luzia Lunardi (85) is embraced by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza, at Viva Bem care home, São Paulo, Brazil.
This was the first hug Rosa had received in five months. In March, care homes across the country had closed their doors to all visitors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing millions of Brazilians from visiting their elderly relatives.
Carers were ordered to keep physical contact with the vulnerable to an absolute minimum. At Viva Bem, a simple invention, ‘The Hug Curtain', allowed people to hug each other once again.
The new coronavirus had first appeared in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and by January 2020 had begun to spread around the world. On 11 March, the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
The disease—transmitted mainly via close contact, respiratory droplets, and aerosols—could be fatal, and people over the age of 70 were one of the groups considered most vulnerable to the disease.
Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed claims about the severity of the pandemic and the danger posed by the virus, undermined quarantine measures adopted at state level, and encouraged Brazilians to continue working to keep the economy afloat.
Brazil ended 2020 with one of the worst records globally in dealing with the virus, with some 7.7 million reported cases and 195,000 deaths.
Emancipation Memorial Debate / Evelyn Hockstein [nominee for PoY]
The Washington Post, 25 June, 2020
A man and woman disagree on the removal of the Emancipation Memorial, in Lincoln Park, Washington DC, USA.
The Emancipation Memorial shows Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation in one hand, with his other hand over the head of a Black man in a loincloth, kneeling at his feet. Critics argue that the statue is paternalistic, demeaning in its depiction of Black Americans, and that it doesn’t do justice to the role that Black people played in their own liberation.
Those against removal say it is a positive depiction of people being freed from the shackles of slavery, and that removing such monuments can amount to an erasing of history.
The drive to remove the statue came amid a wave of calls to take down monuments of Confederate generals nationwide, a move largely welcomed by activists from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, who see Confederate and other such monuments as reminders of an oppressive history. They call for a more honest accounting of American history.
Officials had erected barriers around the Emancipation Memorial in advance of demonstrations. Residents posted notes on the fence expressing their views, and on 25 June around 100 people gathered at the monument arguing about what it meant.
In February 2021, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced a bill in the US Congress to have the statue removed and taken to a museum.
Injured Man After Port Explosion in Beirut/Lorenzo Tugnoli
Contrasto, for The Washington Post, 04 August, 2020
An injured man stands near the site of a massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, while firefighters work to put out the fires that engulfed the warehouses after the explosion.
At around 6pm on 4 August, a massive explosion, caused by more than 2,750 tons of high density ammonium nitrate, shook Lebanon’s capital Beirut. The explosive compound was being stored in a warehouse in the port. Some 100,000 people lived within a kilometer of the warehouse.
The explosion, which measured 3.3 on the Richter scale, damaged or destroyed around 6,000 buildings, killed at least 190 people, injured a further 6,000, and displaced as many as 300,000.
The ammonium nitrate came from a ship that had been impounded in 2012 for failing to pay docking fees and other charges, and apparently abandoned by its owner. Customs officials wrote to the Lebanese courts at least six times between 2014 and 2017, asking how to dispose of the explosive.
In the meantime, it was stored in the warehouse in an inappropriate climate. It is not clear what detonated the explosion, but contamination by other substances, either while in transport or in storage, appear the most likely cause.
Many citizens saw the incident as symptomatic of the ongoing problems the country is facing, namely governmental failure, mishandling and corruption.
In the days after the blast, tens of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of central Beirut, some clashing with security forces and taking over government buildings, in protest against a political system they saw as unwilling to fix the country’s problems.
Fighting Locust Invasion in East Africa/Luis Tato
For The Washington Post, 24 April, 2020
Henry Lenayasa, chief of the settlement of Archers Post, in Samburu County, Kenya, tries to scare away a massive swarm of locusts ravaging grazing area, on 24 April. Locust swarms devastated large areas of land, just as the coronavirus outbreak had begun to disrupt livelihoods.
In early 2020, Kenya experienced its worst infestation of desert locusts in 70 years. Swarms of locusts from the Arabian Peninsula had migrated into Ethiopia and Somalia in the summer of 2019. Continued successful breeding, together with heavy autumn rains and a rare late-season cyclone in December 2019, triggered another reproductive spasm.
The locusts multiplied and invaded new areas in search of food, arriving in Kenya and spreading through other countries in eastern Africa. Desert locusts, Schistocerca gregaria, are potentially the most destructive of the locust pests, as swarms can fly rapidly across great distances, traveling up to 150 kilometers a day.
A single swarm can contain between 40 and 80 million locusts per square kilometer. Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day: a swarm the size of Paris could eat the same amount of food in one day as half the population of France.
Locusts produce two to five generations a year, depending on environmental conditions. In dry spells, they crowd together on remaining patches of land. Prolonged wet weather—producing moist soil for egg-laying, and abundant food— encourages breeding and producing large swarms that travel in search of food, devastating farmland.
Even before this outbreak, nearly 20 million people faced high levels of food insecurity across the East African region, challenged by periodic droughts and floods. COVID-19 restrictions in the region slowed efforts to fight the infestation as supply chains of pesticides were disrupted.
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