An intimate moment between a gay couple from St. Petersburg, Jon and Alex, has nabbed top honors in the prestigious World Press Photo Contest 2015. The image was taken by Danish photographer Mads Nissen, a staff photographer for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken. The 2015 Contest drew entries from around the world: 97,912 images were submitted by 5,692 press photographers, photojournalists, and documentary photographers from 131 countries. The jury gave prizes in eight themed categories to 42 photographers of 17 nationalities from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, Eritrea, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, UK and USA.
Jury chair Michele McNally, director of photography and assistant managing editor of The New York Times, said: “It is an historic time for the image… the winning image needs to be aesthetic, to have impact, and to have the potential to become iconic. This photo is aesthetically powerful, and it has humanity.”
A group of 17 internationally recognized professionals in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography, chaired this year by McNally convened in the World Press Photo office in Amsterdam to judge all entries. All entries were presented anonymously to the jury, who discussed their merits while operating independently of World Press Photo.
In this year’s contest, all participants were required to provide files as recorded by the camera for all images proceeding to the final stages of the contest. World Press Photo Managing Director Lars Boering said of the findings: “Our contest rules clearly state that the content of the image should not be altered. This year’s jury was very disappointed to discover how careless some photographers had been in post-processing their files for the contest. When this meant a material addition or subtraction in the content of the image, it led to the images being rejected from the contest.
“We believe there were no attempts to deceive or to mislead, but our independent experts found anomalies in a large number of files and presented their findings to the jury. According to the contest rules, only retouching of files that conforms to currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed, and the jury is the ultimate arbiter of these standards.
“It seems some photographers can’t resist the temptation to aesthetically enhance their images during post-processing either by removing small details to ‘clean up’ an image, or sometimes by excessive toning that constitutes a material change to the image. Both types of retouching clearly compromise the integrity of the image. Consequently, the jury rejected 20 percent of those entries that had reached the penultimate round of the contest and were therefore not considered for prizes.
Alessia Glaviano, senior photo editor Vogue Italia and L’Uomo Vogue, Italy, remarked: “The photo has a message about love being an answer in the context of all that is going on in the world. It is about love as a global issue, in a way that transcends homosexuality. It sends out a strong message to the world, not just about homosexuality, but about equality, about gender, about being black or white, about all of the issues related to minorities.”
