The News in a Photo

The headline screams out at us every morning when we pick up the newspaper, but it is so quickly forgotten – tomorrow is another day, and another headline.

are a different matter altogether. It may be a photo of a news event, but a good image stays long after the event is over, or even forgotten.

A good photograph haunts us, makes us laugh, or cry, lets us remember people or things we may have relegated to the back of our memory, speaks to us often in ways that words cannot.

Thus is the task and responsibility of the photojournalist: to capture a most fleeting moment and give it a life way beyond its time.  

Manila mall-goers will once again have a rare opportunity to view some of the world’s most moving photos when the internationally acclaimed World Press Photo Exhibition goes on view in three venues in Metro Manila for the second year in a row from August 1 to 22.

The exhibit, which features 200 photos that won awards in the 2007 World Press Photo Competition, will be open to the public free of charge beginning at The Podium in Ortigas Center from August 1-7.  It will then proceed to the SM Mall of Asia on August 8-13, and The Block at SM City North EDSA on August 14-22.

A joint partnership of the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University (ACFJ) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the show has also drawn support from The Podium, SM Supermalls, and Unilever Philippines.

The competition’s photo of the year – an image of an American soldier resting at a bunker in Afghanistan, taken by the British photographer Tim Hetherington and carried by Vanity Fair – topbills the exhibit.  The picture bested about 80,536 photographs submitted to the competition by 5,019 photographers from 125 countries.

The exhibit is part of ACFJ’s photojournalism program which was initiated in 2006 with the support of the World Press Photo. At the heart of the program is the Diploma in Photojournalism, a seven-course online learning program for photojournalists. The program has drawn some of the country’s finest young photojournalists as students and is run by an international faculty of senior photographers and academics.

One of its graduates, Jaime “VJ” Villafranca, a freelance photographer, recently won the Ian Parry Scholarship 2008, an international competition run by The Sunday Times (London), with a photo essay on youth gangs that was the major essay in the portfolio he submitted for the diploma program.

The competition and the traveling exhibit have been run since 1955 by the World Press Photo, the Amsterdam-based media NGO that is reputed to be the world’s most significant and prestigious platform for press photography.

Shown each year at about 85 venues in 40 countries, the exhibit features the year’s top photo along with award-winning images from each of the 10 contest categories including spot news, general news, people in the news, nature, contemporary issues, sports actions, sports features, daily life, portraits and arts and entertainment.

The high quality of photojournalism involved is considered to set a standard in the field.

Filipino photographer Albert Garcia won the first prize in the nature and environment category in the 1991 competition for his picture of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

Last year the exhibit was also shown in the same three venues, drawing huge crowds that were invariably awed, fascinated and moved by gripping pictures of the news stories that hugged the headlines. The show was likewise co-sponsored by ACFJ and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with support from The Podium and SM Supermalls.

This year the group, along with Unilever Philippines, aims to bring campus journalists to the exhibit through guided tours and lectures.

Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch group of companies, brought the exhibit to Manila in 2001. According to Jika Mendoza-Dalupan, corporate relations director, Unilever’s support of World Press Photo stems from the company’s mission of supporting the arts and culture of the countries where it operates.

A selection of the winning images is available from the World Press Photo download area. (www.worldpressphoto.nl/downloads) World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon and TNT.