The prestigious international photojournalism competition World Press Photo 2024 has crowned Mohammed Salem as the overall winner thanks to his touching photograph entitled “A Palestinian Woman Embraces the Body of Her Niece”. The image shows a Palestinian woman clutching the body of her five-year-old granddaughter in the morgue of Nasser Hospital in Gaza. Salem captured this heartbreaking moment just days after becoming a father, describing the image as “powerful and sad, summing up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip.”
Salem’s work encapsulates the drama of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting the heavy toll paid by Palestinian women and children. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has in fact estimated that women and children currently represent over two thirds of the victims of the conflict. The image of Salem thus becomes a universal symbol of human suffering, a silent cry of pain.
The 2024 World Press Photo also recognized other photographers for their exceptional work. Among them, Lee-Ann Olwage was awarded the title of World Press Photo Story of the Year with her work Valim-babena (for GEO), while Alejandro Cegarra was awarded the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award for his The Two Walls project (The New York Times/Bloomberg). Finally, Julia Kochetova won the World Press Photo Open Format for her project entitled War Is Personal.
The winning images of the World Press Photo competition continue to tell stories of great emotional impact, highlighting social and human issues that deserve global attention.
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