No blurry Black and whites, No pictures taken with an Holga, No post dramatic moody images. The WPP 2009 is a real crop of hard core photojournalism. Indeed, there is a lot of squared shape color-enhanced images but, for some reason, they are not bothersome.
Its pure professionalism here, far, far away from the citizen journalist snapshots and where experience is really obvious. From sports photos, always impressive in innovation and creativity, to issues the US has hardly ever mentioned, its a very balanced and informative year.
All the photographers mentioned should be proud, very proud of their work and the jury should be commended for its ability to avoid the traps of trendy pseudo psycho photojournalism. Although, it does seem that the winning image was principally chosen for the importance of the event that it represent rather then its pure photo journalistic qualities. As if the the jury had decided to reward the best images of the most importnat events of the year, rather than the best image.
Nevertheless, it;’s a great image.
We are still waiting for the multimedia award and the World Press Association to recognize it as a separate and viable entry.
see the winners here :