The cover of this book—one that isn’t an intimidating hulk of a volume and doesn’t attempt to awe you with extraordinary size—is stripped of flamboyant gilt. No revealing laser cut-outs, let alone textural emboss, fancy spot-UV nor covered in special fabric or finish. Heck, it doesn’t even have a hard cover.

In return, the almost nondescript compendium demands nothing of you to understand the universal language spoken between the eye and the heart; neither does it take any more to incite an instantaneous visceral reaction after it reels you in with an eye out beyond the obvious, before spitting you out with an ego deflated like a post-Macy Day’s balloon.



Title: World Press Photo ‘07
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Editor: Elsbeth Schouten

Have you forgotten not to judge a book by its cover?

Characterized with the year’s winning image on the cover, what lies beneath is a brand of revered prestige and respected acclaim bestowed religiously every year since 1995, by an international jury which convenes in Holland under the auspices of the World Press Photo Foundation for the unenviable task of selecting the press photographs.

This year, the jury of the 50th World Press Photo Contest went through two weeks of intense deliberation, with 78,083 entries submitted by 4,460 photographers from 124 countries to reach the results you see in World Press Photo 2007.

Free of frills, the world’s finest in arresting, moving photojournalism work in World Press Photo embraces you in its shackles. Wisely, it lets the picture speak for itself. Its significance is so pure it is intense. Strong enough to move mountains, powerful enough to touch the most cynical of hearts.

Such is the reverberant influence it wields.

Well, what makes a definitive press photograph? Michelle McNally, chair of the jury, sheds some light in her foreword.

“I believe it should be historical, defining a particular time, place and event. It should be sociological, explaining what people do and what people do to each other. It should have a psychological and emotional tone, making the viewer feel something. It should also have an aesthetic component, drawing in the viewer, urging them to learn more about the story the picture is telling. Above all, it should be truthful. It is the quality of veracity which sets an important picture apart, and which highlights the crucial role of the photojournalist.”

Trite as it is, a picture speaks a thousand words. However, how many of those words speak the truth?

Fraught with underlying currents of tension, the jagged little pill shatters rose-tinted glasses with its documentations, lunging at you with a breathtaking ferocity and a smack-in-your-face intensity.







Each photographer’s poetry of the body language captures a moment that bares the soul, naked of mystique and deception. But really, is that a moment of truth, or just a moment in time? Is the photograph an authentic mirror of a reaction?

The question is: Does it conceal or reveal? Is there truth in the picture? Or is there a bigger picture to the truth?

Spencer Platt of Getty Images graces the cover with his snapshot “Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August”.

Adding to the buzz were the facts that this is also the first time a Getty Images photography has won this honor, and the detail-dense winner of World Press Photo 2007 was quite different from its more individual, personal predecessors.

But like many of his peers, what he caught on film struck a controversial chord.

A group of young Lebanese drove through a bombed-out Beirut neighborhood in a red Mini convertible in the aftermath of Israeli bombings.

The picture captured the collision of two worlds.

That was the first day of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, when thousands of Lebanese started to return to their homes. To many, it looked like a picture of disaster tourism at its worst. A bunch of cavalier rich kids on a voyeuristic trip. The glamour amidst the gloom screamed.

Or did it? Some interviews have reported otherwise. Apparently, the youths were actually residents of the devastated area. Like many others, they fled to a nearby hotel. That day, they borrowed a friend's car to check on their apartment and their belongings, and put the roof down because of the warm weather.

It certainly was, as the judges hailed, an image that revealed the "complexity and contradiction of real life, amidst chaos."

Yet, it is also said to speak to a wider truth about Lebanon, said to be “a country of extreme division and inequality, and many Lebanese were just as voyeuristic as the rest of the world during and after the bombing.”

Looks like a picture has to engage the eye, the heart and the mind to speak a thousand words.


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