Press Releases

02/08/2008

Image of exhausted U.S. soldier in Afghanistan wins top photo prize

By TOBY STERLING
Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- British photographer Tim Hetherington won the top prize Friday in the World Press Photo competition, with an image of an exhausted U.S. soldier after a fire-fight in Afghanistan.

The award, for a picture Hetherington took while working for Vanity Fair magazine, is considered one of the most prestigious for photojournalists.

The winning photo shows the soldier leaning against a bunker wall, his hand covering one eye and the other clutching his helmet. It was taken Sept. 16 in the Korengal Valley, the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the country including the downing of a U.S. helicopter.

"This image shows the exhaustion of a man and the exhaustion of a nation," said jury chairman Gary Knight in a statement. "We're all connected to this. It's a picture of a man at the end of a line."

In addition to the overall winner, the jury awarded first, second and third prizes in 20 categories, and two honorable mentions. Getty Images won the most with five awards.

The first place in both Spot News Singles and Spot News Stories went to Getty, for a blurred image by U.S. photographer John Moore taken at the moment of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Dec. 27.

Getty also had a first in Contemporary Issues Singles for a shot of a dead mountain gorilla being carried out of Virunga National Park in Eastern Congo, strapped to a wooden stretcher. The photo, by South African photographer Brent Stirton, was for Newsweek.

Associated Press photographer Oded Balilty, last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, won third prize for People in the News Stories for a series from Nanjing, China. AP also won an honorable mention for Spot News Singles for an image from the Gaza Strip by Spanish photographer Emilio Morenatti.

Hungarian photographer Balazs Gardi, working for VII Network, won first in both General News Singles and General News Stories for photos from Afghanistan -- one of a man holding a wounded boy, and a haunting black-and-white shot of a mountain landscape.

Both were taken in the same region of Southern Afghanistan as Hetherington's competition-winning image, which took second place in General News Stories.

National Geographic swept the Nature Stories, with first place to National Geographic Images for David Liittschwager's shots of magnified ocean life off the coast of Hawaii, and second and third places for National Geographic Magazine.

Time magazine won in the Portraits category with a head shot of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, taken by British photographer "Platon." Time also won in the People in the News category, with a photo of Kurdish rebel fighters in Northern Iraq taken by Philippe Dudouit of Switzerland.

In the category of sports action, Bulgarian Ivaylo Velev won for Bul X Vision Photography Agency with an image of freeride competitor Philippe Meier being chased by an avalanche in Flaine, France.

Tim Clayton won top prize for sports action stories for the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. Andrew Quilty won the sports features prize for Oculi, in the Australian Financial Review Magazine. Erik Refner of the Copenhagen daily Berlingske Tidende won first prize for sports features stories.
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