A crying toddler is standing on the US-Mexican border, his mother is just being arrested – now the picture of him has been chosen as a world press photo. Photo by photographer John Moore was honored with the prestigious World Press Photo Award on Thursday in Amsterdam as the best press photo of the year.
The picture, taken in June 2018, shows Honduras Sandra Sanchez being scanned after being arrested by the US Border Guard. In front of her is her little daughter Yanela, crying.
„The fear in her eyes“
The image of the photographer of the agency Getty show „another kind of violence that is psychologically,“ said the jury of the World PressPhoto Awards on Thursday. The indignation caused by the photo had contributed to the fact that the government of US President Donald Trump has ended the highly controversial separation of illegal immigrants from their children – even if Sandra and Yanela Sanchez were not separated according to the US border guards.
Moore had accompanied US border guards on the border with Mexico in the summer of 2018. On 12 June, officials encountered and arrested a group of illegal immigrants, including Sandra and Yanela Sanchez, at night. „I saw the fear in their faces, in their eyes,“ Moore later said in an interview about the migrants.
People instead of statistics
„I wanted to tell a different story,“ Moore said after the award ceremony in Amsterdam. He wanted to show the human side on a topic that is often dealt with in statistics. Refugees and migration are not just in the US, but a global issue, said the 51-year-old.
This is also reflected in another award at the World Press Photo Award: The Dutch-Swedish journalist Pieter Ten Hoopen was honored for his recordings of Honduran migrants on the way to the United States with the award for best photo story.
The World Press Photo Award is one of the most prestigious awards for press photographers. This year 4738 photographers submitted 78,801 photos. Last year, photographer Ronaldo Schemidt of the AFP news agency won the prize for shooting a burning demonstrator in Venezuela.
