The winners of the World Press Photo 2024: first prize for a shot from the war in Gaza

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Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem won the prestigious award World Press Photo this year with a photo of loss in Gaza.

The heartbreaking photo depicts a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her young granddaughter.

The photo, taken on October 17, 2023 at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, shows Inas Abu Maamar, 36, holding five-year-old Saly, killed together with her mother and sister when a Israeli missile hit their house.

Salem, 39, a Palestinian, described this photo, taken on November 2 last year, as a “powerful and sad moment that sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip“.

“I felt that the photo summarized the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” he said Salem when the image was first published in November.

“People were confused, running from place to place, anxious to know the fate of their loved ones, and this woman caught my attention because she was holding the little girl’s body and refusing to let go.”

The jury declared that Salem’s 2024 winning image was “composed with care and respectwhile offering a metaphorical and literal look at unimaginable loss.”

This is not the first time Salem has been recognized for his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He received a World Press Photo award more than a decade ago for another depiction of the human toll of conflict in the Gaza Strip.

In the other three global categories announced today (Thursday 18 April), the South African Lee-Ann Olwage won the Photo Story of the Year award for his touching series “Valim-babena”, published in GEO magazine.

The project focused on the stigmatization of dementia in Madagascar, a theme the photographer explored through intimate portraits of “Dada Paul” and his family. Lack of public awareness about dementia means that people who show symptoms of memory loss are often stigmatized.

In the series, “Dada Paul”, who has been living with dementia for 11 years, is cared for tenderly by his daughter Fara. One of the most significant images in the series shows him preparing to go to church with his granddaughter Odliatemix, capturing moments of normality and warmth amid the challenges of dementia.

Photographer Alejandro Cegarra, originally from Venezuela and who migrated to Mexico in 2017, won the long-term project award with “The Two Walls,” published by the New York Times and Bloomberg.

Cegarra’s project, which began in 2018, examines Mexico’s changing immigration policies, which have gone from historic openness to strict enforcement at the southern border.

According to the jury, the photographer’s perspective as a migrant gave him a “sensitive” and human-centered perspective, a press release said.

Ukrainian Julia Kochetova won the Open Format award for “War is Personal.”

The project distinguished itself from coverage of the ongoing conflict by offering a personal look at the harsh realities of war. On a dedicated website, the author has fused traditional photojournalism with a diary-like documentary style, incorporating photography, poetry, audio clips and music.

The Associated Press won the Open Format award in the Regional Africa category with the multimedia story “Adrift,” created by journalists Renata Brito and Felipe Dana.

The story investigates the fate of West African migrants who attempted to reach Europe via a treacherous Atlantic route, but ended up on a ghost ship discovered off the coast of Tobago.

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Ebrahim Noroozi from the Associated Press won the Asia Stories award for its series ” Afghanistan on the Edge ,” documenting the country since the Taliban took power in August 2021.

World Press Photo is an independent non-profit organization based in the Netherlands, founded in 1955.