The global winners of the 2022 World Press Photo Contest have been announced. These winning images from the competition strive to ‘recognizes the best photojournalism and documentary photography of the previous year,’ according to World Press Photo.
For this year’s competition, 64,823 photographs and open format images captured by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries were submitted to be judged. Judging involved both regional and global juries, which saw the regional judges whittle down the choices from their respective regions to then be submitted to the global jury for the final selections. You can read more about the judging process on World Press Photo’s website.
As for prizes, World Press Photo says ‘Every regional winner of the Contest receives a monetary prize of €1,000, inclusion in the annual worldwide exhibition, inclusion in the annual yearbook, publication and a personal profile on the World Press Photo website, promotion on World Press Photo platforms, an invitation to the Winners’ Program, and a physical award.’ Global winners, in addition to their regional prizes, also receive an extra €5,000 (~$5,500) monetary prize, as well as a physical reward.
This year’s global World Press Photo of the Year award goes to Amber Bracken of Canada, who captured ‘Kamloops Residential School’ for The New York Times. In this image, Bracken captured ‘Red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside [to] commemorate children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, an institution created to assimilate Indigenous children, following the detection of as many as 215 unmarked graves, Kamloops, British Columbia, 19 June 2021.’
Speaking to the image, global jury chair Rena Effendi said ‘It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory, it inspires a kind of sensory reaction. I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world.’
The following gallery will highlight the global winners for Photo of the Year (one image), Photo Story of the Year (four images), Photo Long-Term Project Award (five images) and Photo Open Format Award (a screenshot of the video project and a link out to the video).
You can browse the entire library of prize-winning images on the World Press Photo contest page.