World Press Photo 13 Exhibition

We went to the Kitzingen City Exhibition Hall to visit the exhibition of World Press Photo Contest 13, which was organized by the World Press Photo Foundation. The foundation has arranged travelling exhibitions in the different parts of the world and more than a hundred cities that NewYork, Moscow, Rome and Tokio are some of them and I am pleased to see the exhibited works in Kitzingen.

Each year, thousands of photographs are sent to the World Press Photo Contest and an international jury evaluates these photographs under nine different categories. Then, awarded photographs are compiled and the travelling exhibition is organized by the World Press Photo Foundation, which is supported by the Netherlands Directorate of National Lottery and Canon worldwide. Travelling exhibits provide the opportunity of presenting the most impressive snapshots to the millions of people in 40 different countries.

The exhibited works are on the books as not only the best press photographs of the previous year, but also historical documents that have indefinable importance. From 124 countries, exactly 5.666 Photographer with 103.481 photographs participated in the 56^th World Press Photo 13 exhibition that we visited.

Founded in 1955, World Press Photo Foundation is popular with the most participated and prestigious press photography contest. The aim of the Netherlands based foundation is to support the photojournalism and documentary photography worldwide and bring high standards to the press photography. The foundation arouses interest in public opinion by reaching the works of photographers to the larger masses. Besides, the foundation generalizes the free exchange of information and enables appreciation for these works.

The work entitled “Joy at the end of the Run”, which is the winner photograph in the category of Sports Action,  welcomes us at the entrance of the hall in the exhibition.
This snapshot, which was taken by Malaysian freelance photographer Dr. Wel Seng Chen in Indonesia’s city of West Sumatra, reveals a tradition of 400 years. The bull race, which is called Pacu Jawi, is organized in cleaned fields after the rice harvest. The bare footed competitors tie themselves to two bulls by using a wood harness and they herd the bulls by gripping their tails. The winner of the competition is determined according to the talent of gripping the animal on the straight line and the collaboration between the two bulls.

While we could not get over the impression of the photographs that we watched for minutes in the exhibition hall of the ground floor, we stuck in front of the photographs on the next floor. The emotion that first photograph reflects to us, captures our whole bodies:
The photograph is the winner of the Spot News Category and is chosen as the world press photograph of 2012 at the same time. It was taken by Paul Hansen, who is the Swedish photojournalist of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, in the Palestine lands of Gaza, November 20^th 2012. When we read the information about the photograph, we already took part in the entire story and we would be part of that story for a long time.

Titled as “Gaza Burial”, the photograph reveals that the dead bodies of the two years old Suhaib Hijazi and his brother, almost four years old Muhammad, who died on November 19^th when their house was destroyed because of an air attack by Palestine, have been carried by their uncle to a mosque in Gazze for the funeral ceremony. In the same attack, the father of the boys, Fouat also died and their mother and four other siblings were badly injured.

Be sure that you will feel the agony in the face of uncle and the rage of the crowd following. You may look at the photograph here.

Even though for some people it is not easy to look at the photographs, which are found inconvenient for the children, I think there is a great deal of people that include themselves in the life stories of the photographs. While even remembering some of the photographs is enough for my eyes fill with tears, I know that I could not even guess how living that stories requires courage and how psychological and physical power was exerted at the unfortunate moments that the works were documented.

The second prize in the Spot News category belongs to the photograph that titled “Interrogation” by Emin Özmen that we know from Turkey. It was taken in July, 31^st 2012 in Syria’s city of Aleppo. You may view the photograph that Syrian antagonists interrogates by torturing an informant, who was captured in Aleppo, here.

As the Alaturka.Info staff, we want to thank all the photojournalists for these significant documents and first of all, we thank the World Press Photo Foundation for bringing us together with these works, then, we thank all the supporters and laborers.