The World Press Photo of the year surprised and touched us all: John Stanmeyer’s photograph of African immigrants on a Djibouti beach holding up their phones to the night sky, searching for a signal to reach their families before shipping off towards Europe and beyond. The photograph may be less “shocking” than previous winning photographs, but it is equally meaningful. As the photographer Jilian Edelstein said, “It’s a photo that is connected to so many other stories—it opens up discussions about technology, globalization, migration, poverty, desperation, alienation, humanity.”
Matthieu Rytz, the photographer and curator who is the head of World Press Photo in Montreal, endorsed the jury’s decision and remarked on a diverse selection as well as on the number of local photographers among the winners. One thinks of the photograph by Taslima Akhter where a man and a woman, fatal victims of a Bangladeshi garment factory’s collapse, embrace among the ruins. Since its publication in 2013, the photograph had been destined to be awarded. An anthropologist by training, Rytz is also the founder of Anthropographia, a prize awarded to photographers whose long-term investigative subjects condemn the violation of human rights. As for his personal projects, since 2011 Rytz has been working on the migration of populations affected by climate change.
For the second consecutive year, his team and OXFAM Quebec have joined forces with World Press Photo, providing the public with additional exhibition space on the mezzanine of the Marché Bonsecours. This year, the photographer William Daniels was invited to produce a report on Benin.
EXHIBITION
World Press Photo et Regards
OXFAL Québec / William Daniels
Marché Bonsecours
325, rue de le Commune Est
Montréal, Qc, Canada
www.worldpressphotomontreal.ca
www.worldpressphoto.org
www.anthropographia.org
www.williamdaniels.net
www.fujifilm-x.com/photographers/fr/matthieu_rytz
