Earlier than his tenth birthday, Mahmoud Ajjour misplaced each of his arms after an Israeli explosion tore off certainly one of his arms and triggered extreme accidents to the opposite. Ajjour was fleeing his dwelling in Gaza with members of the family final March when he was struck; he instructed his household to go on with out him.
Months later, Gazan journalist Samar Abu Elouf photographed Ajjour in Qatar, the place he fled for medical remedy. One in every of Eluof’s portraits of the nine-year-old was acknowledged with the 2025 World Press Photograph of the 12 months award, as introduced at present, April 17.
Whereas on project for a New York Instances story on Gazans receiving medical remedy in Qatar, Elouf photographed Ajjour partially illuminated by a beam of daylight that reveals each the kid’s unyielding gaze and the sheer devastation of his accidents. The self-taught photojournalist left Gaza in December 2023 and lives in the identical house complicated as Ajjour.
The placing {photograph} gives a glimpse into the fact confronted by hundreds of different kids in Gaza, which is dwelling to the highest variety of little one amputees anyplace on the planet, in keeping with the United Nations Youngsters’s Fund (UNICEF).
“This can be a quiet photograph that speaks loudly,” World Press Photograph Basis Govt Director Joumana El Zein Khoury mentioned in a press release. “It tells the story of 1 boy, but additionally of a widerwar that can have an effect for generations.”
Human rights organizations, together with Amnesty International and a UN Particular Committee, characterize Israel’s assaults on Gaza as genocide. In line with the Committee to Shield Journalists, extra members of the media have been killed since Israel’s assaults on Gaza started in October 2023 than in some other battle the group has documented.
“This younger boy’s life deserves to be understood, and this image does what nice photojournalism can do: present a layered entry level into a posh story and the inducement to lengthen one’s encounter with that story,” World Press Photograph International Jury Chair Lucy Conticello mentioned in a press launch.
Samar Abu Elouf is the second Palestinian photojournalist to win the World Press Photograph’s high award since October 2023. Final April, the prize went to Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem, who captured a Gazan lady clutching the small physique bag that held the physique of her five-year-old niece.
This 12 months, over 59,000 photos taken by photographers from 141 international locations had been thought of for the coveted annual award. The 2 runners-up for World Photograph of the 12 months captured Chinese language immigrants crossing the United States-Mexico border and a person standing in a drought-stricken riverbed within the Amazon, respectively. The competition’s regional winners embrace snippets of life amid political turmoil: a groom in Sudan on a cellphone, a portrait of a trans man within the Netherlands revealing top-surgery scars, and pictures of a Ukrainian little one affected by panic assaults.
Elouf will obtain a €10,000 (~$11,300) money prize and a Fujifilm digicam. The photograph will tour in a year-long international exhibition with different regional winners and finalists in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia.
