Australian wins World Press Photo award for migrants image

A haunting image of migrants passing a baby underneath a razor-wire fence on the Serbian-Hungarian border won the prestigious World Press Photo award for 2015 on Thursday — even though it had never been published.

Australian freelance photographer Warren Richardson made the moonlit image on Aug. 28 and said he offered it to two news organizations, neither of which responded.


Jury members, however, saw something special in the black-and-white image. Vaughn Wallace, deputy photo editor for Al Jazeera America, said the image is "incredibly powerful visually, but it's also very nuanced."

The photo, he said, "causes you to stop and consider the man's face, consider the child. You see the sharpness of the barbed wire and the hands reaching out from the darkness."

Richardson said he did not carry any equipment to transmit his images while he spent days camping near the Hungarian border crossing at Roszke to document the passage of the migrants fleeing conflict, poverty and persecution in the Middle East and Africa. He said the delay in sending out his images from his home in Budapest may have been to blame for the lack of interest.

"Sometimes, it's first in, first served, and I understand that theory," he said. "I can't blame anyone else but myself. But at the end of the day the picture talks for itself."

"I would have thought straight away, 'Yeah, this will definitely be published,'" he said. "But I didn't think like this."

It was so dark when he took the picture that Richardson did not even realize the migrants were passing a baby under the fence until he looked at the image on his computer. He checked the photos only once he got home to preserve his camera's battery.

"Had I used a flash, I would have given their position away to the Hungarian police," Richardson said.

The image won top prize in the contest, which drew 82,951 images from 5,775 photographers. It also won the Spot News Singles category.

Last year's competition was overshadowed by the disqualification of a winner who admitted that one in a series of pictures about the Belgian city of Charleroi was actually taken in Brussels, and by controversy surrounding the pictures of the gritty, post-industrial Charleroi.

Lars Boering, managing director of the World Press Photo Foundation, said the contest set up a new code of ethics for this year's contest to ensure the integrity of images. He praised photographers for largely sticking to it, saying there were more checks and "fewer problems" than last year.

"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," he said.

Several winners in the news categories focused on the migrant crisis and one of its root causes, the devastating civil war in Syria.

But the contest's wide range of categories also provided an eclectic mix of other subjects ranging from wrestlers in Senegal to ice hockey players in Russia, and from people diving with whales to orangutans climbing trees.

Japanese photographer Kazuma Obara won the People Stories category for a series of pictures shot on old Ukrainian film depicting the life of a woman affected by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Associated Press photographer Daniel Ochoa de Olza won second place for portraits of young Spanish girls sitting in decorated altars as part of a festival. Ochoa also took third place for photos showing raindrops covering portraits of victims of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that were left at a street memorial.

Americans swept the top three places in the long-term projects category. Mary F. Calvert won for a series of photos dealing with sexual assault in the American military. Nancy Borowick took second place for a series of photos documenting her parents' battle with cancer. And David Guttenfelder was awarded third place for a series of pictures from North Korea, the bulk of which were made when he was a regular visitor to that country as a staff photographer for The Associated Press.

The New York Times won three categories — General News Singles, General News Stories and Daily Life Stories — and Times photographers placed third in General News Stories and second in Daily Life Singles. French agency Agence France-Presse won the three top placings in Spot News Stories and a second place in General News.

(AP) 

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "IS Fighter Treated at Kurdish Hospital" by photographer Mauricio Lima for The New York Times which won a first prize in the General News singles category shows a doctor rubbing ointment on the burns of a 16-year-old Islamic State fighter named Jacob in front of a poster of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, at a Y.P.G. hospital compound on the outskirts of Hasaka, Syria, August 1, 2015.        

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "A Life in Death" by photographer Nacy Borowick which won second prize Long Term Projects shows Howie and Laurel Borowick sitting next to the bathroom telephone as they receive the most recent news from their oncologist. New York, US, March 8, 2013. A daughter photographs her own parents who were in parallel treatment for stage-four cancer, side by side. The project looks at love, life, and living, in the face of death. It honors their memory by focusing on their strength and love, both individually and together, and shares the story of their final chapters, within a year of each other.           

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Gang-Related Violence" by photographer Niclas Hammarstrom which won a third prize Spot News singles category shows the body of a victim killed in gang-related violence. This is the fourth gang- related killing on the same street in one night. Police have no witnesses. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, March 4, 2015.               

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "La Maya Tradition" by Associated Press photographer Daniel Ochoa de Olza which won second prize People stories shows young girls between the age of 7 and 11 are chosen every year as 'Maya' for the 'Las Mayas', a festival derived from pagan rites celebrating the arrival of spring, in the town of Colmenar Viejo, Spain. The girls are required to sit still for a couple of hours in a decorated altar.                      

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Amazon's Munduruku Tribe" by photographer Mauricio Lima for The New York Times which won second prize in the Daily Life singles category shows indigenous Munduruku children playing in the Tapajos river in the tribal area of Sawre Muybu, Itaituba, Brazil, Feb. 10, 2015. The tribesmen of the Munduruku, who for centuries have sanctified the Tapajos River on which their villages sit, are fighting for survival. Brazil’s government plans to flood much of their land to build a $9.9 billion hydroelectric dam, the Sao Luiz do Tapajos, as part of a wider energy strategy across the Amazon rainforest.               

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "A Life in Death" by photographer Nacy Borowick which won second prize Long Term Projects shows Howie and Laurel Borowick embrace in the bedroom of their home. In their 34- year marriage, they were diagnosed with stage-four cancer at the same time. New York, USA, March 8, 2013. A daughter photographs her own parents who were in parallel treatment for stage-four cancer, side by side. The project looks at love, life, and living, in the face of death. It honors their memory by focusing on their strength and love, both individually and together, and shares the story of their final chapters, within a year of each other.                 

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Storm Front on Bondi Beach" by photographer Rohan Kelly for the Daily Telegraph which won first prize in the Nature singles category shows a massive cloud tsunami looming over Sydney as a sunbather reads, oblivious to the approaching cloud on Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, Nov. 6, 2015.                     

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Avalanche, 25-27 April, Everest Base Camp, Nepal" by photograher Roberto Schmidt for AFP which won second prize Spot News stories category shows a man suffering from severe head trauma being bundled in a sleeping bag used as a makeshift stretcher while being taken by rescuers to a medical tent moments after the avalanche in Nepal, 25 April 2015.              

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Under the Cover of Darkness" by photographer Paul Hansen for Dagens Nyheter which won second prize General News singles category shows refugees traveling in darkness through Europe to avoid detection, Lesbos, Greece, Dec. 6, 2015.                

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Aftermath of Airstrikes in Syria" by photographer Sameer Al-Doumy for AFP which won the first prize in the Spot News stories category shows a wounded man walking out of a dust cloud following reported airstrikes in the town of Hamouria, Syria, Dec. 9, 2015.

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Emily and Kate and Eddie and Reid" by photographer Sara Naomi Lewkowicz which won a third prize in the Contemporary Issues stories category shows Kate often keeping Emily company while she took baths. Late in the pregnancy, particularly once Emily was overdue, she said that baths were one of the easiest ways to relax her body. Kate, who became pregnant three weeks later than Emily, showed less, and the two would often compare their baby bumps and talk to each other’s bellies. Maplewood, New Jersey, USA, Nov. 29, 2015. Although they hadn't planned it, Emily and Kate got pregnant within weeks of each other through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, respectively. Their sons were born within four days of each other, and the couple embraced the challenge of raising the two babies at once.                         

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Citizen Journalism in Brazil's Favelas" by photographer Sebastian Liste for Noor agency which won third prize in the Daily Life Stories category shows the leader of the Papo Reto collective receiving an image of a 22-year-old taxi driver who was shot dead by a police officer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feb. 8, 2015. A group of friends from Alemao, a slum in Rio de Janeiro, formed a media collective called Papo Reto, or "straight talk". Social media allow them to report stories from their community otherwise ignored by traditional media.                    

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis" by photographer Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times which won the first prize in the General News Stories category shows refugees attempting to board a train headed to Zagreb, Croatia in Tovarnik, Croatia, 18 September 2015.                              

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis" by photographer Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times which won the first prize in the General News Stories category shows refugees arriving by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece, 16 November 2015.           

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "The Power of Nature" by photographer Sergio Tapiro which won the third prize in the Nature Singles category shows a powerful night explosion of the Colima Volcano with lightning, ballistic projectiles and incandescent rockfalls, Comala municipality in Colima, Mexico, 13 December 2015.                              

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Into the Light" by photographer Zohreh Saberi which won the third prize in the Daily Life Singles category shows Raheleh, who was born blind, standing behind the window in the morning. She likes the warmness of the sunlight on her face. Babol, Mazandaran, Iran, Nov. 12, 2015.                 

In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Haze in China" by photographer Zhang Lei which won the first prize in the Contemporary Issues Singles category shows a city in northern China shrouded in haze, Tianjin, China, Dec. 10, 2015.