An impressive exhibition of winning images from The World Press Photo of the Year 2016 will be held at Casa Gardens from October 1 to 23, hosted by Casa de Portugal.
Every year, the competition honors the photographer whose visual creativity and skills made a picture that captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance in the last year.
Richardson’s picture – which also won first prize in the Spot News category – shows refugees crossing the border from Serbia into Hungary, near Horgoš (Serbia) and Röszke (Hungary). Taken at night on 28 August 2015, this man and child were part of the movement of people seeking to cross into Hungary before a secure fence on the border was completed.
“I camped with the refugees for five days on the border. A group of about 200 people arrived, and they moved under the trees along the fence line. They sent women and children, then fathers and elderly men first,” explains Richardson, who is a freelance photographer, currently based in Budapest, Hungary.
“I must have been with this crew for about five hours and we played cat and mouse with the police the whole night. I was exhausted by the time I took the picture. It was around three o’clock in the morning and you can’t use a flash while the police are trying to find these people, because I would just give them away. So I had to use the moonlight alone.
” Francis Kohn, chair of the general jury, and photo director of Agence France-Presse, said:
“Early on we looked at this photo and we knew it was an important one. It had such power because of its simplicity, especially the symbolism of the barbed wire. We thought it had almost everything in there to give a strong visual of what’s happening with the refugees. I think it’s a very classical photo, and at the same time it’s timeless.”
Huang Wen, director of new media development at Xinhua News Agency, said:
“It’s a haunting image. You see the anxiousness and the tension in such a mood which is pretty different from those in-your-face images. It’s subtle, and shows the emotion and the real feeling from the deep heart of a father just trying to hand over his baby to the world he was longing to be in. This is really something.”
The 2016 contest drew entries from around the world: 5,775 photographers from 128 countries submitted 82,951 images. The jury gave prizes in eight categories to 41 photographers from 21 countries.
“This year we had more photographers and more entries than ever in our contest and we see this as a great support of the industry,” Lars Boering, managing director of the World Press Photo Foundation. “We see that the photographers are as committed as we are to providing accurate and fair images on the world’s most important events and issues.
A group of 18 internationally recognized professionals in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography from 16 countries judged all entries.
The premier award, the World Press Photo of the Year, carries a cash prize of 10,000 euros. In addition, Canon will present the winning photographer with the recently launched Canon EOS-1D X Mark II camera and lens kit.
The exhibition of prize-winning pictures will visit around 100 cities in about 45 countries over the course of the year and will be seen by more than 3.5 million people worldwide.
October 1 to 23, 2016
Casa Garden,
13 Praça de Luís de Camões
Visiting hours
Sunday: 14.00 – 18.00
Monday: CLOSED
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00 – 19.00
