A photo of a Syrian refugee passing a baby under barbed wire has been named 2015’s World Press Photo of the Year.

Hope For a New Life by Australian freelance photographer Warren Richardson shows the refugee at the Serbian-Hungarian border in August 2015.

‘It was really misty, and you saw a lot of torches through the mist, you had the police helicopter roaring overhead with a searchlight. That must have really reminded the Syrians of being back in Aleppo, because they’d scatter as soon as it came overhead,’ Richardson said at Thursday’s press conference in Amsterdam. ‘It was surreal.’

Working in pitch dark at 2am, Richardson was unable to use his flash in case he gave away the refugees’ position.

Striking details

He only realised how striking his image was when he got home and looked at it on his computer. ‘I opened it up, raised the brightness, and then wow!’ he said. In the darkness, he didn’t realise that the man was passing a baby under the fence.

‘We were very open, but there was total agreement when we saw this photo that it was going to go far,’ said Francis Kohn, chair of the general jury.

‘I like the photo more as the days go by,’ he told DutchNews.nl. ‘There’s a lot of depth and elements that when combined, make it a very powerful photo.’

Dutch roots

Founded in 1955 by a group of Dutch photojournalists who wanted to expose their work to an international audience, World Press Photo’s annual contest has since grown in size and prestige.

Over the years, the organisation has rewarded and exhibited iconic work from legendary photographers like Don McCullin and the late Tim Hetherington.

Now World Press Photo awards prizes for image and multimedia work, organises over 100 exhibitions per year, and holds masterclasses for aspiring photographers.

The 2016 contest drew entries from around the world: 5,775 photographers from 128 countries submitted 82,951 images.

Poetic

‘You can clearly see that the style of World Press Photo has changed through the years, from the clear-cut 1970s newspaper photography, to the more poetic approach of recent years,’ WPP director Lars Boering told DutchNews.nl.

In an era of citizen-journalism and smartphone reports from conflict zones, Boering believes that photojournalism is as important as ever. ‘I think that the audience is looking to journalistic storytellers to give them something they can’t find on their own,’ he said.

‘The commitment, research, and storytelling skills of photojournalists gives the audience something beyond the stream of photography they see every day online. People are still interested in great and important stories.’

Controversy

Since the revelation that the overall winning photo in 2013 was heavily edited in photoshop, and was in fact a composite made up of three separate photos, World Press Photo has tightened their rules regarding image editing.

‘The rules are very clear and very strong,’ said jury leader Francis Kohn. ‘We know the photos are vetted for this before the last rounds so it’s not something we as a jury had to worry about.’