This year’s World Press Photo of the Year competition has been won by Yasuyoshi Chiba’s photograph Straight Voice, the Amsterdam-based competition organisers announced online on Thursday evening.

The winning image shows a young man, illuminated by mobile phones, reciting protest poetry while demonstrators chant slogans calling for civilian rule, during a blackout in Khartoum, Sudan, on 19 June 2019.

‘This moment was the only peaceful group protest I encountered during my stay. I felt their undefeated solidarity like burning embers that remain to flare up again,’ Yasuyoshi Chiba, said of his photograph.

Chiba, from Japan, is Agence France-Presse’s chief photographer for East Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Jury chairman Lekgetho Makola said the winning entry is an image that inspires at a time of violence and conflicts. ‘We see this young person, who is not shooting, who is not throwing a stone, but reciting a poem,’ he said. ‘It’s acknowledging, but also voicing a sense of hope.’

Algerian youth

The jury chose Kho, the Genesis of a Revolt by Romain Laurendeau as World Press Photo Story of the Year. The winning series tells the story of Algerian youth, who by daring to challenge authority, inspired the rest of the population to join their action, giving birth to the largest protest movement in Algeria in decades.

The independent jury for the 2020 Digital Storytelling Contest selected Battleground PolyU, by DJ Clark/China Daily, as World Press Photo Interactive of the Year.

Battleground PolyU is a 360 degree experience that immerses the viewer in a defining moment in the history of democracy in Hong Kong after a protester was shot by a traffic policeman.

DJ Clark, producer and editor of the awarded production, said he had been capturing the protests for about six months up when the PolyU demonstrations happened. ‘The biggest thing about this movie for me is the opportunity for future audiences to immerse themselves in the experience and understand what it was like to be there,’ he said.

The World Press Photo organisation was founded in 1955 by a group of Dutch photographers to expose their work to an international audience. Since then the contests have grown into the world’s most prestigious photography competitions.