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On April 20, the final winners of the 2023 annual World Press Photo Awards were officially announced. 24 winners and 6 honorable mentions continue to call attention to the world's major issues in 2022 with their cameras in hand.
Since the day of its invention, the primary purpose of photography,
before it was referred to as
Numerous photographers also established themselves as news reporters. In
addition to merely capturing news events, they also managed to infuse their work with heart-touching
artistic excellence. Causatively, many prestigious awards for journalistic photography were
established to promote their contribution, while gaining their own worldwide recognition of
professionalism. Many tempting titles among photographers are included:
Pulitzer Prize for
Photography, Pictures of the Year International(POYi), International Photography Awards (IPA),
and of course, the most esteemed one of all:
At its first launch in 1955, 42 photographers from 11 countries submitted
just over 300 photographs to WPP.
Just in the following year, the number of participants had already quadrupled,
and the number of nationalities had doubled. After nearly
seven decades of growth, as the number of entries had grown tremendously to
These WPP-wining
works hold a shared legacy of both documented events and photojournalism, while WPP has
also played a crucial role in their recognition and dissemination. With its far-reaching influence,
WPP can be able to impact the creation and documentation of photojournalism worldwide through its
tastes,
ultimately shaping the evolution of the field.
Outside the light of its professional influence,
doubts and criticisms were continuous as well.
Some argue that WPP's photo selection has become
monotonous and lacking in creativity, with a growing
tendency towards stereotypical choices,
which can be exemplified by their overreliance on black
and white photography, viewed as indicative of this foundation's
increasingly predictable artistic taste. Additionally,
one of the most common criticisms indicates repetitive keywords like
More to that, the most serious accusation concerns racial diversity:
in 2021, only 7% of participants came from South America, 5% from Southeast Asia and Oceania,
and just 3% from Africa. Despite this lack of
representation among participants, countless award-winning
works are still shot year by year in these regions, whose initiative
to tell own stories seem to be missing from their hands.
As the leading authority in photojournalism, WPP has already been highly regarded by photographers
worldwide. However, these kinds of skeptical voices have doubtlessly cast shadow on its reputation.
how much of these skepticisms are warranted?
The ‘shortcut’ to the Photo of the Year really exists?
What does it take to win a WPP?
To answer these questions, we have collected and analyzed
Our goal was to identify trends and characteristics of WPP awards both externally and internally, strive to demonstrate the overall criteria and taste of WPP awards (and their trends), and ultimately tend to acquire the answer and a guidance for you who are interested:
We kick off with appetizer,
the basic element of photos: color.
The first color photographic technique has long been invented by Maxwell
from England in the middle of 19th century,
and the portable and practical color photography
technology has been invented by Kodak and Polaroid in 1930s as well.
With modern thinking, it's easy to think that color
photography should have been the norm since then.
Yet on the very contrary to today’s common custom,
it was long considered frivolous and vulgar at its first emergence from 1950s,
and was not seen as a formal medium for serious photographers, but rather
more used by their more advertisers and commercial peers.
It can be indicated by quote from famous
photographer Walker Evans:
As for the representative of the general view of press photographers, WPP, its tendency
regarding this issue was also unapologetic:
it wasn't until 1965, its 10th year, that the
This taste with differentiation from WPP
and its participants is public and long-term. For an instance,
a category was established specifically for color pictures,
for 9 times out of 68, meaning that color
photos are more likely to be subject to
inconsistent review standards compared with other
photos in these years, thus affecting their
chances of winning other prizes.
For a more explicit interpretation,
we extracted the
With a range of advantages such as subject highlighting,
atmosphere creation, detail enhancement,
and contrast accentuation, preference for black and white photos
is common within photographers’ world, so photojournalists and their
representatives at WPP are naturally not exempt from it.
That being said, after the legendary and historic color
photographic exhibition of William Eggleston’s works held in 1976,
the importance of color in the storytelling and artistic expression
of photography had gradually been acknowledged within the photographic
community, especially for the emotional expression value of certain colors.
Specifically, for WPP, looking back again at our extracted color palettes,
we can also spot certain amount of colorfulness, especially represented by
warmer orange and cooler blue. These award-winning photographs of color
expression in warm and cool tones are, without exception, textbook-level
demonstrations of the use of color in photography:
Photographic Examples of Warmer and Cooler Color Tones
That said, the longevity of color preferences can still reflect a dangerous bias that has long been warned about in WPP and the photojournalism community, as long been indicated, quote “Media impoverishment of aesthetic criteria and the conceptual contempt for the image as a form of thought”.In short, even with the latest digital technology, photojournalism is still facing the bottlenecks of creativity, which has been recognized by WPP, who had been embracing an increasingly open attitude towards new forms of media works, and even recently introduced a new category ‘Open Format’ from 2022 for specific promotion. In spite of rising debates towards this trend, WPP's proactive approach itself to media boundary exploration still won wide approval.
Apart from its superficial artistry like color, as mentioned at the beginning, photography was initially invented to capture and preserve, in the form of intuitive visual impact, those precious moments in history that words alone cannot fully convey. Through decades, as the well-recognized pioneer and beacon of photojournalism, WPP contributed to countless historic photographic coverages of events that shaped our world, as this institution claims themselves,
Those stories, unfortunately, have been referred to being a bit homogeneous in many eyes. Voices of controversy have never ceased, expressing frustration and aesthetic fatigue of endless ‘conflict’ and ‘protest’ main themes of WPP’s choices of award, claiming that each year’s wining photos are almost never-ending relevant to these kinds of keywords while many other important issue topics are being ignored. To make matters worse, there are more and more unsavory speculations accusing that WPP’s this kind of favor might encourage photographers to chase or deliberately amplify the conflict, in exchange of attention and recognition for themselves.
To find out with an illustrative example,
with the help of AI sequential models,
we have summarized and categorized all
the major news award-winning photos from 1955 to the present,
and picked out those about
From the timeline above,
it is able to conclude that in its 68-year history,
‘protest’-related works accounted for 47 years as 69% of the total.
Especially since 1981, at least one work notably mentioning
protest has been produced each year. This kind of sustained attention to
‘protest/conflict’, maybe in addition to "war",
is highly unique in WPP's history in terms of recurring themes,
which explicitly demonstrates its value.
However, it is still unclear
whether ‘protest’-related works are more likely to win awards.
To find out, we analyzed award distribution, only to find out that winning
probabilities were relatively equal across different categories
(first prize, second prize, and third prize), hovering around 30%.
Protest, along with conflict and war, is
long recognized as one of the eternal themes
within human societies, which is always the most direct manifestation
of social contradictions at the peak of relevant regions.
Arrogant aesthetic fatigue from a condescending bystander
will foster indifference towards civilians who suffer in conflicts
in person and undermine their right to attention. Thus, continuous
attention and exposure to such issues should of course be of great
importance without doubt.
We hope that WPP will adopt a more comprehensive
and unbiased journalistic approach through these works,
particularly when dealing with intricate and contentious
topics, which entails, instead of mere attention-grabbing
visuals, considering all relevant aspects of the issue at hand.
The more impressive a story or picture is,
the more credit is given to the photographer.
Along with the world-famous photo stories that have
become legendary because of WPP,
are the photojournalists who captured them.
Eddie Adams,James Nachtwey,Anthony Suau…
These now world-renowned
photojournalists have all achieved global success
and recognition through their participation in WPP,
which once again demonstrates its unshakeable recognition.
Some of whom were even awarded more than once, as the chart will show below.
Among those who won the most WPP awards, all
of the award-winning photographers are white and
most of them from western countries such as the United
States and the Netherlands. We’ve come to one of the fiercest
controversies regarding WPP: even under the impression of
its global status and recognition,
it has never been this hard to ignore the fact that it is an
institution mainly located in Netherlands, one of the most traditionally
recognized European countries as there are.
To further explore this problem,
we have compiled the distribution of the
nationalities of the WPP winning photographers of all time:
As illustrated above,
in the top 10 countries with the highest
distribution of photographer nationalities,
7 of them are from Europe, 2 of them are form
North America, one, which also features long-term
tradition as a white country, is from Oceania.
The highest country outside of the 3 most distributed continents is South Africa,
which also has an all-white distribution of photographers,
followed by Argentina with a white population over 95%.
The highest country with a predominantly non-white populations is Japan,
with an overall 19 awards, far from the top 10 boundaries of 30.
Given the data we collected, it’s no wonder that the
After facing significant media scrutiny in 2020, WPP has claimed theirselves to be taking steps to address the situation. An International Advisory Committee, which will provide guidance on WPP's globalization strategy going forward, has been established in addition to its Supervisory Board which is still predominantly composed of white. With the emerging rule only in effect for two tournaments, its practical effect remains to be seen.
The controversy about the nationality of the photographer
in the previous chapter, in fact, still has more potential
contexts to be explored. It only takes a superficial reflection
to see yet another great controversy: compared to the nationalities
of award-winning photographers with a large deviation distribution,
many countries that have never appeared in the former seem to always
be represented in the winning works, most of which were commonly linked
to the usual topics emerging in award winning stories:
For further exploration, with the help of AI sequential model, we extracted the
exact
location where each photo was taken from its official description,
if possible, and connect them to the photographer’s nationalities.
Nearly 60% of the photos were taken in areas outside of the
photographers'
own nationalities, with only 40% being shot in their home countries.
Among the photographers who went abroad, we can see that most of them
traveled from the United States to other countries.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are their most common destinations, which makes
it conceivable that war and conflict will be the predominant themes in these
photos they took.
In contrast, photographers from underdeveloped area rarely go
overseas,
such as African country photographers who mostly reside in relatively developed white
communities like South Africa.
Regardless of the subjective intentions behind these photographers
leaving their homeland and coming to foreign lands to capture these
stories, there should never been doubt that their photography had
played a positive role in exposing local social issues.
However, one of the
simplest
truths remains intact: no matter how hard outsiders try, the ones that can better
deliver stories
of own hometowns are always locals. The guarantee of the opportunity to tell the story
around
oneself is also due to the most essential journalistic professional requirements, which
is the
pursuit of the highest level of truthfulness and reversibility.
It can be seen, again after the concentrated media
blasts in 2020, that WPP has taken some measures
regarding this issue.
In 2021, the institution
Two new editions have already been held under renewed regulation in 2022
and 2023, in which the work of photographers from some of
the long-neglected regions can finally be appreciated.
Although accompanied by controversy over the differential treatment,
these initiatives by WPP have been proved effective in increasing the
visibility of photographers' work in specific regions.
Following an explicit logical thread - from the photos themselves, to the content of the stories they carry, to the photographers who took them, and the ways and places they were taken - our process of exploration finally came to some conclusion.
For preference, it is evidently shown in WPP's choice of awards,
which can be demonstrated in both terms of forms and stories.
Take some examples: a particular preference for black and white or strong color
expressions,
and an ongoing focus on stories about specific themes, such as 'protest' and 'war'.
There is no evidence, however, that WPP's preference for these attributes goes
beyond general aesthetic and professional journalistic intuition,
and becomes unfairly biased toward them. Specific choices of topics may
increase exposure, but there is no proof that this will improve the chances of getting a
higher prize. Hence, it is really hard to prove that there are any shortcuts to winning
in these dimensions.
As one of the most important news recording vehicles and art forms today, the connotations and trends faced by photojournalism are becoming more complex and varied than ever. Although it is not possible to be truly global and unbiased at this stage, WPP remains the best player in the role of worldwid leader in photojournalism development.
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Core code parts(including the basic implementation process) + Output datasets