Review: The World Press Photo Contest at the Southbank

Review: The World Press Photo Contest at the Southbank

21 November, 2012
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

Powerful, fasinating and moving Louisa Lee trys to make sense of the World Press Photo Contest at the Southbank Centre.

Text and image are interrelated at the World Press Photo Prize: one cannot exist without the other. Set around the foyer of The Southbank Centre, the annual exhibition is accompanied by a blurb expressing the difficulties of judging the competition due to ‘a momentous year full of tragedy and turmoil, both natural and man-made.’ 

From the 100,000 plus images entered into the prize, only a handful have been selected in such categories as Nature Stories, News Singles and Contemporary Issues, each comprising of a first, second and third award. World events ranging from the Arab Spring, the shootings by Anders BehringBreivik in Oslo, to the Tsunami in Japan, are documented in large-scale prints propped up on stands at varying angles.

In one of the most provocative images of the show, Maria, a Ukrainian sex- worker, lies with pants, bra and a bandaged leg. Cigarette in hand, bruises and ulcers riddle her body as she stares blankly at the viewer. Although the wall text states that she is adamant that she is not HIV positive, the photographer, Brent Stirton, states that he is unsure whether she is still alive, being ‘very sick when he took the picture.’ Forced into dangerous lifestyles due to desperation and lack of opportunity, the image is symptomatic of many women in her condition. The photo took first prize in the Contemporary Issues singles award this year.

In the ‘Nature’ section, a selection of photos, also by Stirton, depicts the trade in rhino’s horns for medicinal use. A group of poachers stand by a hornless, bloody rhino, holding its horn. Juxtaposed next to this, a Vietnamese lady gleefully grinds a rhino horn claiming that it cured her kidney stones.

The Daily Life section covers  images of sunbathing Russians in suburbia, bums in the air with power stations directly behind them. Another series tells the story of Marcos and Monica, a couple married for sixty-five years and now coping debilitating Alzheimers. Photos depict Maris being fed by Marcus in their apartment as he insists on looking after her until the end, ‘Tell me where she is going to better than here’, he says, ‘I treat her like a princess, here she has everything.’



Other images which caught my attention included Pedro Pardo’s gruesome shot of a torso-less body stood over by a gun-wielding policeman in the Mexican city of Acapulco. The wall explains how Acapulco has become a battleground in wars between drug cartels. The photo depicts one of the three bodies discovered in the streets. Shortly before this event, fifteen beheaded bodies were found in the city. The photos included in the second part of this exhibition come with a warning: ‘Please be aware that due to the nature of press photography some visitors may find some of the images in this section of the exhibition distressing’. Looking at these disturbing pictures, it’s easy to forget that even the ones displayed are mediated.

The winner of this year’s award is a photo by Samuel Aranda. Chosen for its depiction of a ‘poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event’, the work ties together the personal and the political forming a more universal image than some of the others on show: a mother cradling her eighteen year old son after suffering the effects of tear gas after participating in a street demonstration in Sanaa, Yemen. Picked by a selection of photography ‘experts’, it is relevant to last year’s series of protests and world-wide political uprisings yet is much less gruesome, more subtle than the other images on similar subjects.

The accompanying text of all of the images on display offer large amounts of information and guidance on how to ‘read’ each photo. At the same time the curation of them is quite loose and non-directional. I ask if there is a brochure to accompany the show, the lady refilling the leaflet stands seems oblivious to the fact that this show even exists, neither is it clearly listed in November’s brochure. The display is a little flimsy, even ephemeral. It is welcoming but not set up in a designated exhibition space – something that I feel would allow the viewer more reflection on each photo. At the same time the show is non-discriminative and non-elitist, welcoming in casual visitors and serious documentary photography fanatics alike.

Spoonfed Arts Team