Faccilongo followed a group of Palestinian women whose husbands are imprisoned in Israel.
One of the most powerful stories in the exhibition is that of the series Habibi by the Italian Antonio Faccilongo, which won the first prize for photo reportage of the year. We are looking for testimonies to highlight the multiple oppressions they suffer", says Tosco. Women are its main victims about 30% of marriages are forced and with minors. "For more than seven years Yemen has suffered an armed conflict perpetuated and sustained by men. However, the realities experienced in 2020 go far beyond the pandemic, and that is why the World Press Photo collects images that denounce climate change, reflect social movements and global protests such as Black Lives Matter and show wars and humanitarian crises for example, the one in Yemen, which the Argentine photographer Pablo Tosco explains through the image of Fatima, a fisherwoman from Khor Omeira who took over the business when her husband left for the war. The snapshots related to the coronavirus are in the current affairs category, where photographers such as the Indonesian Joshua Irwandi, the Swiss Roland Schmid and the French Laurence Geai have immortalised the pressure on health workers, the loneliness of hospitalised covid-19 patients and the situations caused by health restrictions, with friends meeting on the sly and leaving a metre and a half of distance between them. The photographers have approached their communities and show us stories of overcoming and survival from the private sphere", says SÃlvia Omedes, director of the Photographic Social Vision foundation, which is in charge of organising the exhibition. "The exhibition is tinged with covid-19 because it has affected all areas. The pandemic has inevitably marked this edition of the World Press Photo, which chose as best photo of the year the image by Danish photographer Mads Nissen showing an embrace between a Brazilian grandmother and a nurse surrounded by plastic. A love story' by Jasper Doest, the winner of the World Press Photo first prize in the nature category.
This makes this edition of World Press Photo special, more realistic with the present moment", says Sanne Schim van der Loeff, chief curator of the World Press Photo Foundation.
Many photographers focused on personal stories and on what was happening close to home.
"The local perspective became much more present because they could not fly to other countries. Doest's images serve to explain the situation that many photojournalists experienced last year. Doest's series, named Pandemic pigeons, won the World Press Photo first prize in the nature category and is part of the exhibition World Press Photo 2021, which can be seen from Thursday until 12 December at the Centre de Cultura Contemporà nia de Barcelona (CCCB).