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[title]One of the State Library's biggest annual drawcards, the free World Press Photo exhibition, returns to the library's Exhibition Galleries on Saturday with 150 startling, evocative and award-winning images.
The winners of this year's competition were selected from 80,408 entries taken by 5,034 photographers from 125 countries. Competition categories in World Press Photo span Daily Life, Contemporary Issues, General News, Long Term Projects, Nature, People, Sports and Spot News.
Turkish photographer Burhan Ozbilici won the coveted overall World Press Photo of the Year. Ozbilici’s picture (which also won first prize in the Spot News Stories category) shows how Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, a 22-year-old off-duty police officer, assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, at an art exhibition in Ankara, Turkey, on December 19, 2016.
“It was a very very difficult decision, but in the end we felt that the picture of the Year was an explosive image that really spoke to the hatred of our times,” says Mary F Calvert, member of the jury, about the winning photograph.
The image pictured above, by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken, won first prize in the category of Contemporary Issues (Stories). It depicts riot police clearing marchers from a secondary road outside a Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) worker camp using rubber bullets, pepper spray, tasers and arrests. For nearly ten months, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their allies camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing their territory and threatening their water supply.
Australian photographers Daniel Berehulak and Cameron Spencer are among this year’s winners.
For this year's exhibition the Library is extending its opening hours until 8pm from Monday to Thursday, so that as many people as possible get to experience this must-see exhibition.
World Press Photo runs May 27-June 25 at the State Library of NSW. Note that some content may be confronting.