Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda receives 2011 World Press Photo distinction

The international jury of the 55th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected a picture by Samuel Aranda from Spain as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011. The photo shows a woman cradling a wounded man during the protests in Yemen in October 2011.

Koyo Kouoh, one of the members’s of the jury, describes how the best perspective on the human condition is captured in the winning photo: “It is a photo that speaks for the entire region. It stands for Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, for all that happened in the Arab Spring. But it shows a private, intimate side of what went on. And it shows the role that women played, not only as care-givers but as active people in the movement.”

However, the simplicity of the composition surrounded by an indirect light given by the intersections of clear and obscure games captured by the camera creates a high intensity emotion. It is a universal pain, beyond the borders of any cultural or geographical criteria. Moreover, it is such a crashing similitude between the scene of Aranda and Pieta of Michelangelo that leads this photo to connect, as the forerunner marble masterpiece did, the relationship between the human feelings like pain and compassion to an universal language.

Aranda’s photo is part of a set of images taken during a revolt in Yemen last fall, while he was on an assignment for The New York Times. He is represented by Corbis Images.

At its 55th edition, the annual World Press Photo Contest is universally recognized as the world’s leading international contest for photojournalists, setting the standard for the profession.

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Other awarded photos can be seen at www.worldpressphoto.org.

Dana Niculescu