Expo World Press Photo Montreal: prestigious images
Posted September 7, 2023 4:33 pm.
Last Updated September 8, 2023 1:00 am.
The 16th World Press Photo Montreal exhibition is considered the world’s most prestigious annual photography competition – with over 60,000 submissions this year.
The general manager of the exhibition, Yann Fortier, says it takes more than good gear to win a category.
“It’s more the fact of being there at the right moment,” Fortier said. “The timing and the action that you will see that will go over the quality of the image itself.”
It runs until October 15 at Bonsecours Market in Salle de la Commune.
Photographer Jonathan Fontaine, honoured by the World Press Photo jury for his series The Nomad’s Final Journey, was in Montreal to launch the event.
The exhibition saying in a press release that, “Fontaine takes a sensitive interest in human and environmental conditions. His series […] won an honourable mention from the World Press Photo jury. The winning image shows 16-year-old Samira observing a refugee camp in Ethiopia. The series completes a photographic project begun in 2016 on the decline of pastoral nomadism, due to droughts induced by climate change in the Horn of Africa.”
The Nomad’s Final Journey: (CREDIT: Jonathan Fontaine, Hans Lucas)
“The year 2022 shows the longest drought on record in this region, lasting from 2019 to the present day,” explained Fontaine. “These recent years show the end of nomadic life and the massive disappearance of livestock, dying of starvation. The consequences of this climate change are manifesting in a food crisis and a social transformation from nomadic to sedentary existence, in climate refugee camps.”
Also on display at the exhibition, an image by photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, crystallizing the impact of the siege of Mariupol, Ukraine.
“When Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, they immediately targeted the strategically important port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. By 20 May, Russia gained full control of the city, which had been devastated by shelling, and tens of thousands of civilians had fled or been killed. Maloletka was one of the very few photographers documenting events in Mariupol at that time. The jury felt his story communicated the horror of the war for civilians; they praised the photographer’s resilience while working under immense pressure and imminent threat.”
Mariupol Maternity Hospital Airstrike: Iryna Kalinina (32), an injured pregnant woman, is carried from a maternity hospital that was damaged during a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, on 9 March 2022. Her baby, named Miron (after the word for ‘peace’) was stillborn, and half an hour later Iryna died as well. An OSCE report concluded the hospital was deliberately targeted by Russia, resulting in three deaths and some 17 injuries.
(CREDIT: Evgeniy Maloletka, Associated Press)
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“The aesthetics of the photos are often there but the stories behind are real,” said Fortier.
“A lot of the events that were depicted are pretty shocking,” said Thomas Alem-Lebel, one of the attendees. “Some of them you know about but only seen them in pictures.”
“With photographers, they put it in such a way that creates a narrative. It makes you feel empathy moreso than just reading the news.”
“You have a bit of everything,” said Rachel Malani, another attendee at the exhibition. “You have inspiring photography. You have amazing and beautiful art, but then you also have the real things. The real world and the real people behind those photos.”
“So, reading their stories too is very interesting. To get into the story of the picture.”
