 1st prize ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT SINGLES: Ariana Lindquist, USA. Girl in an anime character costume waits backstage before performing in a cosplay competition, Shanghai, China In their exhibition notes, the judges of this prestigious world-wide press photography competition state that in evaluating the prize-winners they have endeavoured to focus on the image itself, above and beyond the issue that the image depicts. Yet in many cases, it is impossible to extract image from the issue. A tightly framed photograph taken by Australian Daniel Berehulak, for instance, showing the former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto elegantly adjusting her headscarf is beautiful. But Bhutto’s subsequent death shrouds Berehulak’s image with a haunting contextual power. Elsewhere in the exhibition are images that reinforce the significance of Bhutto’s death in world news: US photographer John Moore portrays a muddy orange flash, snapped at the Pakistan rally the very second the assassin’s bomb exploded.
Headline news stories of the past twelve months re-surface in the World Press Photo competition’s various categories. The Nature Singles and Stories sections are dominated by images of water – the entries are coincidental insofar as their subjects reflect the overwhelming media emphasis on climate change. Jeff Hutchens’ photograph of a sole polar bear sedated by geoscientists researching the bear’s habitat betrays an uneasy realisation of human impact on the environment.
The title of World Press Photo of the Year is bestowed upon a photograph by Tim Hetherington, depicting a US soldier lying exhausted in a dank bunker in Afghanistan. This is a man who, like his country, is struggling over the end of the line.
The inevitable difficulty with competitions such as this is that they valorise the extremes of humanity. At the Powerhouse there is an entire room rated ‘M’ for mature audiences containing strong and, often, frightening images of war, abuse, and death. That these are powerful images certainly owes a lot to the disturbing circumstances they depict; and such images remain important, even necessary, to cut through the abstractions of political spin.
But the everyday, too, rewards us with stories. To the competition’s credit, the categories such as Daily Life, Sports, and, to some extent, Contemporary Issues balance the ‘hard-hitting’ journalism with more understated pictorials from across the globe. Aussie photographers often do well in the Sports categories. This year was no exception with accolades awarded to Australians Andrew Quilty and Tim Clayton for their Sports Singles and Sports Action stories. Clayton’s black-and-white photographs of land-divers in Vanuatu launching off magnificent vine-like scaffolding are breathtaking – both for their aesthetic blast and the sense of community Clayton conveys.
Other memorable series include a photo essay by Olivier Culmann depicting the TV-viewing habits of citizens across the world (illustrating that bad habits are universal, even if home décor fashions are not), and a stunning set of portraits of rural Turkish school-girls by Vanessa Winship.
My favourite images, however, comprised the winning entry of the Arts and Entertainment Stories category: Rafal Milach’s poignant portraits of retired performers from a now-defunct Polish circus. The circus, the accompanying caption reads, was one of the most popular forms of entertainment during Poland’s communist era; but in the last decade, the company gradually slumped into financial decline until it was forced to close. Yet the faces of the aging clowns and contortionists reveal pride not sorrow, and you soon realise this photographic story is one of triumph.
WORLD PRESS PHOTO 08 shows at Brisbane Powerhouse until June 30. The exhibition is free. For more information phone 3358 8600 or visit www.brisbanepowerhouse.org
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