The Gaza Pietà wins the World Press Photo 2024

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Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem, originally from Gaza, won the prestigious award World Press Photo of the Year this year with the heartbreaking image of a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her young granddaughter – a powerful depiction of loss and grief in Gaza.

The photo, taken in Khan Younis a few days following the birth of Salem’s son, shows Inas Abu Maamar, 36, holding 5-year-old Saly, who was tragically killed along with her mother and sister when an Israeli missile hit the their house. Salem, who is Palestinian, described this photo taken on November 2 last year as a “strong and sad moment that sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip.”

Palestinian Abu Maamar, 36, hugs the lifeless body of her 5-year-old son killed by an Israeli raid. The photo was taken by Reuters photographer Mohammad Salem on October 17 in Khan Yunis

The other winners

As for the other categories announced today: South African Lee-Ann Olwage won the Photo Story of the Year award for the ‘Valim-babena’ series published in GEO magazine; Furthermore, the photographer Alejandro Cegarra, originally from Venezuela and migrated to Mexico in 2017, won the award for the long-term project with ‘The Two Walls’, published by the New York Times and Bloomberg; Ukrainian Julia Kochetova won the Open Format award for ‘War Is Personal’; Associated Press won the Open Format award in the Regional Africa category with the multimedia story ‘Adrift’ by journalists Renata Brito and Felipe Dana; and Ebrahim Noroozi of the Associated Press won the Asia Stories award for his series ‘ Afghanistan on the Edge ‘, which has documented the country since the Taliban took power in August 2021.

What is World Press Photo

World Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organization based in the Netherlands, founded in 1955. The World Press Photo of the Year-winning image of Gaza “really encapsulates this sense of impact,” said the president of the world jury Fiona Shields, head of photography at The Guardian newspaper. “It’s incredibly moving to see and at the same time it’s an argument for peace, which is extremely powerful when peace can sometimes seem like an unlikely fantasy,” she added. The World Press Photo jury praised the sense of care and respect in Mohammed Salem’s shot, noting that it offers a “metaphorical and literal look at an unimaginable loss.”

This is not the first time Salem has been recognized for his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; He received a World Press Photo award more than 10 years ago for another depiction of the human toll of conflict in the Gaza Strip.