World Press Photo 2008

I just came back from the World Press Photo 2008 exhibition. It’s hard for me to describe my feelings. The best thing I can say is: I am both amazed and shocked — both speechless and troubled. Probably just as the people behind this important organization intended it to be.

I do not want to talk about the photos showing violent scenes, blood, weapons, crying people, wounded people, and dead people. I do want to talk about one photo telling a horrible story without showing any of those. A photo not taken in the heat of a battle or immediately after an act of terror. A photo that looks as if it was taken in a studio — with perfect lighting, with everything just in place, and with a girl sitting on a chair staring strait at the camera with a blank expression.

The dissonance between the technical perfection of that photo and the story behind it, and the fact that the story is being told without showing any explicit act of violence, kept me hypnotized — staring at Francesco Zizola’s work for long minutes.

I could only wish this story, as well as others I was exposed to today, wasn’t real. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

– Lidor Wyssocky