Devastating conflicts, climate change, migrant crisis. The works awarded by the World Press Photo show people witnessing the major issues facing the world today. These images tell stories of day-to-day people suffering. This kind of exhibition forces awareness and aims to remind us of the need for a free press and the urgent transformative proposals to change this situation of global dehumanization of people from various Nations around the world.
In this year’s edition, there are 24 winners, awarded 6 honorable mentions and 2 special mentions for the jury. World Press photo picture of the year goes to Mohammed Salem. The picture A Palestinian Woman Embraces the Body of her niece was chosen by the jury as the photo of the year. Salem is a Palestinian photojournalist based in the Gaza Strip. He has been working forreuters since 2003.
In North America, it’s possible to visit the exhibitions only in Canada. According to the World Press photo website, only three exhibitions are scheduled during the fall: Montreal and Toronto until October 17 and Chicoutimi until November 10.
Unfortunately, exhibitions are not scheduled in major urban cities in the United States. Perhaps it is because this year’s winner, chosen by the jury, presents several victims of the Palestinian conflict and the war in Gaza that is currently dividing Americans. Or perhaps it is because of the harsh reality of Sandra Mehl’s photo reporter which presents the first climate refugees on the Isle of Jean-Charles in New Orleans that serves as a prediction of the future of millions of Americans, if things don’t change, that lives in the coastal cities most populated such as Houston, Miami, and New York.
The first climate refugees of the United States
In 2016, the effects of the sinking land, compounded by oil extraction and seasonal hurricanes, forced the relocation of the residents of Isle de Jean-Charles of the town of Gray, Louisiana, 65 km north. This marked the first federal climate change resettlement program in the US, making the islanders the country’s first official climate refugees. By late 2022, after six years of administrative challenges and preliminary planning, the islanders were able to move into their new homes.
Jean-Charles Isle, a French-speaking Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indian Tribal Community has been occupied for the last two hundred years. The Isle is located 130 kilometers south of the coast of New Orleans. It once had a school, a church, and hundreds of residents, but today it is just a sliver of land three kilometers long and 300 meters wide surrounded by the waters of the bayou. Since 1955 98% of its surface area has been lost to erosion and rising waters, exacerbated by climate change, which brings ever more destructive hurricanes to bear on the region. The oil industry in Louisiana contributes significantly to the environmental factors impacting Isle de Jean-Charles. Carbon emissions notwithstanding, thousands of offshore platforms in the region require countless kilometers of channels to be dug in the Gulf of Mexico for shipping routes. These channels cause subsidence, a form of underwater erosion, that intensifies erosion on the land.
Sandra Mehl, The Falgout family in Pointe-aux-Chênes house was damaged by Hurricane Ida and because they no longer reside on Isle deJean-Charles, the resettlement project does not cover them.
World Press Photo Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Amsterdam the primary objective of the organization is to support professional photo-journalism.
