The 2017 World Press Photo Exhibition returns to Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall for the 21st year from 3–20 November 2017. The free exhibition brings together 152 winning photographs from the annual World Press Photo Awards, showcasing some of the most powerful, emotional and often disturbing press images of the year. This year’s winners were drawn from a bank of 80,408 images taken by 5,034 photographers from 125 countries. The subjects of the images on display are widely varied including documentation from rallies protesting police brutality, reports from war-torn terrains and striking images selected from nature and sports editorial.

Press Release

THE 2017 WORLD PRESS PHOTO EXHIBITION RETURNS TO SOUTHBANK CENTRE

Friday 3–Monday 20 November 2017

Press preview: Thursday 2 November 2017 5–6.30pm

Admission free

The 2017 World Press Photo Exhibition returns to Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall for the 21st year from 3–20 November 2017. The free exhibition brings together 152 winning photographs from the annual World Press Photo Awards, showcasing some of the most powerful, emotional and often disturbing press images of the year.

In its 60th year, the World Press Photo Awards continues to be the premier annual international competition for press photography and multimedia storytelling. This year’s winners were drawn from a bank of 80,408 images taken by 5,034 photographers from 125 countries. The exhibition at Southbank Centre will be the only display in England, however the winning photographs travel together to 45 countries and are seen by more than four million people each year. The subjects of the images on display are widely varied including documentation from rallies protesting police brutality, reports from war-torn terrains and striking images selected from nature and sports editorial.

The exhibition includes this year’s World Press Photo of the Year, An Assassination in Turkey, taken by Burhan Ozbilici for The Associated Press. Ozbilici’s photograph, which also won the first prize in the ‘Spot News’ stories category, depicts the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov by an off-duty Turkish police officer, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş.

This year, the jury awarded prizes to two photographers from the UK: Tom Jenkins from The Guardian and Mathieu Willcocks from MOAS. Jenkins won the first prize for the ‘Sports’ singles category with Grand National Steeplechase. His image, taken at the Grand National in Liverpool in 2016, captured a chaotic moment of a jockey mid-air whilst falling off his horse. French-born, UK-based Mathieu Willcocks won the third prize in the ‘Spot News’ stories category with Mediterranean Migration. Willcocks’ image series documents the unsettling journeys of refugees in transit off the coast of Libya, struggling at sea and crammed into the hold of boats.

With freedom of information, freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech being more important than ever, World Press Photo strives to promote quality visual journalism. The annual photo contest rewards photographers for the best pictures contributing to the past year of visual journalism.

World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon.

Clockwise from top left: World Press Photo of the Year: An Assassination in Turkey, © Burhan Ozbilici, The Associated Press

Nature - Second Prize, Stories: Pandas Gone Wild, © Ami Vitale, National Geographic

Daily Life - First Prize, Singles: The Silent Victims Of A Forgotten War, © Paula Bronstein, Getty Images

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