World Press Photo Exhibition returns to Bucharest in May

The most important photojournalism exhibition worldwide, World Press Photo, will be on display for the second time in Bucharest, during May 2-26.

The exhibition is an initiative of World Press Photo Foundation, founded in 1955 in the Netherlands, which operates as an independent non-profit organization, headquartered in Amsterdam. The Foundation’s activity is devoted to imposing some high-standards in photojournalism and documentary photography worldwide.

The World Press Photo Contest made its debut in 1955, when 42 photographers of 11 countries entered over 300 photographs to be judged by the jury. In 2012, the Contest drew over 5,247 participants in 124 countries, who entered 101,254 photographs in the competition.

All the works entered in the Contest are open to the public through the annual exhibition traveling all over the world, which is set up in over 100 places in over 45 countries and visited by over 3.5 million people in each edition.

The international jury of the 56th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected a picture by Paul Hansen of the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012 (in picture). The picture shows a group of men carrying the bodies of two dead children through a street in Gaza City. They are being taken to a mosque for the burial ceremony while their father’s body is carried behind on a stretcher. Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his older brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their mother was put in intensive care. The picture was made on 20 November 2012 in Gaza City, Palestinian Territories.