French photographer wins World Press Photo

13 February 2004

AMSTERDAM — French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju was named on Friday as the winner of the World Press Photo competition.

The international jury of the 47th annual World Press Photo, which is run from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, chose a colour image from Bouju that shows an Iraqi man comforting his 4-year-old-son at a Prisoner of War centre near Najaf, Iraq.

The picture was taken on 31 March 2003 and can be viewed at http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/index.jsp.

Some 4,176 professional photographers from 124 countries participated in this year’s contest, the premier annual international competition in press photography. More than 63,000 images were entered. The number of digital camera pictures submitted to the contest this year was the highest ever.

Bouju will receive his award and a cash prize of EUR 10,000 at an awards ceremony in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, on Sunday 25 April 2004.

The ceremony will be preceded by a three-day program of lectures, discussions and screenings of photography. Two exhibitions will be shown in the Oude Kerk: the annual award-winning pictures and a special selection of Bouju’s work.

The exhibitions are open to the public from 26 April through to 20 June and will subsequently visit more than 80 locations around the world.

Bouju works for the Associated Press news agency. He shared the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography with three photojournalists with the Associated Press. The team was awarded the prize for its coverage of the devastating ethnic violence in Rwanda.

Bouju’s 1995 entry was a photograph of refugee children pleading to be allowed to cross a bridge from Rwanda to Zaire.

He also shared the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography with John McConnico, a former UT Department of Journalism student in Texas, and four other photographers.

Subject: Dutch and French news