My takeaway from the World Press Photo 2025 awards.
When the interpreter was holding back, choked by tears and paused her Arabic to English translation, finding it difficult to speak, I sensed this tender moment was pivotal for me in the whole World Press Photo Awards ceremony.
After all Mahmoud Ajjour, 9 lost both his arms in the Gaza war, and his portrait by photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf, from Gaza is now Picture of the Year. The interpreter continued after a coy exchange of glances with each other.
Samar was recounting stories gained from her time spent with his family. Immediately after the attack, Mahmoud who was badly injured told his mother and sister to run for safety. He thought he was going to die.
Later a question from the fellow journalist Kiana Hayeri asked Samar if Mahmoud had seen his winning portrait which has now won a major award.
Samar said that Mahmoud acknowledged the award and was hopeful that it being seen across the world, would help bring Gaza back into focus, and also it could help his fund raising for prosthetic limbs.
She instantly received a huge applause from the audience, which was probably directed at Mahmoud.
His lifetime suffering is a burden for us all to bear. Hope through suffering. This is a most honourable gesture. His outlook is clear.
Earlier in the day, I visited the FOAM photography museum. The historical haunting images taken by a cohort of ‘stealth’ photographers towards the end of WW2 in Amsterdam, who risked their lives if caught, moved me immensely.
The Underground Camera exhibition is a powerful testimony that war and violence always affects the innocent. Families are torn apart, women and children starve or die of hunger, men are imprisoned or killed.
The picture of a hand sewing a Jewish Star emblem onto a coat to identify one’s Jewish ethnicity, as commanded by the occupying Nazis was a symbol of persecution and ultimately a death warrant to so many Jews in Europe.
These harrowing images from WW2 serve as a reminder of the inhumanity of mankind and I’m glad to be able to see them 80 years on, as archival photographs. I acknowledge the brave men and women who felt it was their duty to take these images as a record and memory of a grim time in Europe.
Is history repeating itself? Do we ever learn from history? A little boy today can only provide hope that it doesn’t.
As I complete this post, I’m sitting across the canal of Anne Frank’s house, now a steel and glass structure to shepherd the thousands of visitors through the prewar home, once a secret safe space for this extraordinary story.
I cannot help but imagine the strength and courage of these young children like Mahmoud and Anne Frank, and countless innocent war victims, also Kim Phuc the ‘napalm girl’ in which she appeared as a terrified child horribly burnt, running away naked with her family from a US bombing raid. This famous image is now the subject of an authorship dispute.
Who are the aggrieved and who are the aggressors? Peace is fragile.
explorenation.net ~ photography posts, workshops, writings and thoughts by Steven V-L Lee 
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