 |
| Picture © Samuel Aranda-Courtesy World Press Photo |
Well, the benefits have been in from the World Press Picture 2012 contest, and it was Samuel Aranda who won the coveted title of Globe Press Photo of the 12 months 2012 award with his photograph of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative inside a mosque employed as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in the course of clashes in Sanaa, Yemen.
Significantly has been said and written about regardless of whether this photograph deserved the award or didn’t, and various opinions from revered photographers, editors and the like, literally flooded newspapers, web sites and blogs…and on social network internet sites. Absolutely everyone has an viewpoint…and voiced it. NPR even compared the scene to the Pieta, writing “the image bears an uncanny resemblance to Michelangelo’s iconic (and religious) Pieta. Along those lines, The New York Times describes it as having “the mood of a Renaissance painting.”
Ah, well…is this maybe too a lot artsy pondering?
Whatever.
But here’s my take. I think the photograph is definitely strong and compelling. Is it a great photograph? Perhaps, maybe not…but it definitely hits residence with its depiction of pain, anguish and upheaval arising from a single of the nations least known in the Middle East…Yemen. This is not the often observed images of young protestors with painted faces or gasoline masks, civil war or brutal police or military violence. Just a profoundly unhappy image.
One more point struck me. Here’s a photograph of a scene of a badly injured protestor, lovingly cradled by a girl totally veiled, covered in a niqab and wearing gloves. Although she is virtually faceless, I  sensed her ache, her suffering and agony by her physique language…which no niqab can hide. Her being covered up so fully could even compound the poignancy of the scene.
And that is the energy of this photograph.
And yes, niqab-wearing women are sentient human beings…they are mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and encounter suffering, anguish. love and affection as we all do.
That is my take on it. And in my view, that’s why it won.
Samuel Aranda was born in 1979 in Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Barcelona, Spain. When he was 19, he began operating as a photojournalist for El Pais and El Periodico de Catalunya. A handful of a long time later on, he traveled to the Middle East to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the Spanish agency EFE. In 2004, he joined Agence France-Presse, covering several conflicts and social concerns in Spain, Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestinian Territories, Morocco and Western Sahara.
