Coronavirus print is named World Press Photo of the Year

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (AP) – A photo that symbolizes ‘love and compassion’ of an 85-year-old Brazilian woman receiving her first embrace in five months from a nurse through a transparent ‘hug curtain’ is the World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday.

The choice of a winning photo depicting the global pandemic was almost inevitable for the contest that covered a year in which news around the world was dominated by the virus that killed nearly 3 million people, including more than 360,000 in the severe hit Brazil.

The image of Danish photographer Mads Nissen captured the moment when Rosa Luzia Lunardi was embraced on August 5 by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza in the Viva Bem care home in Sao Paulo.

A curtain of clear plastic – its yellow edges folded into a shape that looks like a pair of butterfly wings – offers protection, as does the nurse’s face mask.

“This iconic image of COVID-19 commemorates the most extraordinary moment of our lives, anywhere,” said juror Kevin WY Lee. “I read vulnerability, loved ones, loss and separation, death, but, importantly, also survival – everything is rolled into one graphic picture. If you look at the image long enough, you see wings: a symbol of flight and hope. ‘

The image Nissen took for the Panos Pictures agency and the Danish daily Politiken also won first prize in the General News Singles category of the coveted contest.

‘The main message of this image is empathy. It’s love and compassion, ”Nissen said in a statement released by the organizers of the match.

“It’s a very, very difficult, cruel situation, and in that horror, in the suffering, I think this picture also brings light,” Nissen said during an online awards ceremony after being told that he had won the award and who won 5,000 euros. ($ 6,000) price that goes with it.

Second in the category was a much grimmer COVID-19 image – the body of a suspected coronavirus victim who was wrapped in plastic by a Indonesian photographer Joshua Irwandi on April 18.

The pandemic even reached the Environment Singles category, with American photographer Ralph Pace winning for his image of a curious California sea lion swimming to a face mask floating underwater at the Breakwater dive site in Monterey.

Judges looked at 74,470 photos from 4,315 photographers before selecting winners in eight categories, including general news, sports, the environment and portraits.

The World Press Photo Story of the Year was awarded to Italian documentary photographer Antonio Faccilongo, who works for Getty Reportage, for a series entitled “Habibi” about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons smuggling their semen out of detention facilities in hopes of a to set up family. .

Winner in the Spot News Singles category was a picture of the debate over race in the United States. The photo by Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post shows how a white man and a black woman disagree about the removal of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, DC, which depicts a freed slave in front of Abraham Lincoln’s knees.

The Black Lives Matter movement also appeared, with John Minchillo, the photographer of the Associated Press, on the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd who won third prize in the Spot News Stories category won by Italian Lorenzo Tugnoli who won Contrasto works for a series of images depicting the devastating harbor explosion in Beirut.

The category of contemporary issues was won by Russian photographer Alexey Vasilyev with a series on the film industry in the northeastern Russian region of Sakha. Associated Press photographer Maya Alleruzzo finished second in the category with a story about the Islamic State group that enslaves Yazidi women in Iraq.