AMSTERDAM (AP) – Associated Press photographer Evgeniy Maloletka was honored with the World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday for his harrowing image of rescue workers carrying a pregnant woman through the devastated compound of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in chaos After a Russian attack.
Ukrainian photographer’s March 9, 2022 picture of the mortally wounded woman, her left hand on her bloodied left lower abdomen, highlighted the horror of Russia’s brutal attack on the eastern port city earlier in the war.
32-year-old woman Iryna Kalinina died of her injuries half an hour after giving birth to the lifeless body of her baby named Miron.
“For me, it’s a moment I want to forget all the time, but I can’t. The story will always stay with me,” Maloletka said in an interview ahead of the announcement.
“Evgeniy Maloletka captured one of the most defining images of the Russo-Ukrainian War in incredibly challenging circumstances. Without his unwavering courage, little would be known of one of Russia’s most brutal attacks. We’re extremely proud of him,” said Julie Pace, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.
J. David Ake, AP’s director of photography, added, “It’s not often that a single image becomes etched into the world’s collective memory. Evgeniy Maloletka lived up to the highest standards of photojournalism, capturing the “defining moment” while continuing the tradition of AP journalists worldwide to shed light on what would otherwise have gone unseen.”
Maloletka, AP video journalist Mystyslav Chernov and AP producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, also Ukrainians, had just arrived in Mariupol when Russia’s all-out invasion, which began on February 24, 2022, sparked Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II . They stayed for more than two weeks and reported how the Russian military bombed the city, hitting hospitals and other civilian facilities. An AP investigation found as many as 600 people may have been killed when a Mariupol theater used as a bomb shelter was hit on March 16 last year.
The three were the only international journalists left in the city when they finally managed the risky escape.
World Press Photo Foundation executive director Joumana El Zein Khoury told the AP that the jury members quickly decided that Maloletka’s picture should win the prestigious award.
She said it was “obvious from the start that it had to win. All judges really said it from the beginning of the evaluation. And why? Because it really shows how the war and in this case the war in Ukraine affects not just one generation but multiple generations.”
Maloletka said the team felt it was important to stay in Mariupol despite the danger “to collect people’s voices and their emotions and show them to the whole world.”
A series of photos by Maloletka from besieged Mariupol won the World Press Photo Stories European regional award, announced in March. Maloletka’s images from Mariupol have also received awards such as the Knight International Journalism Award, the Visa d’or News Award and the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie.
“I think it’s really important that a Ukrainian just won the competition showing the atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians in Ukraine,” he said. “It is important that all the pictures we took in Mariupol became evidence of a war crime against Ukrainians.”
In the three other global categories announced Thursday, two-time World Press Photo winner Mads Nissen of Denmark won Photo Story of the Year for his series for Politiken and Panos Pictures entitled “The Price of Peace in Afghanistan,” about daily life in Afghanistan Afghanistan in 2022.
Anush Babajanyan from Armenia won the Long-Term Project Award for Battered Waters for VII Photo and National Geographic Society, and Egyptian photographer Mohamed Mahdy won the Open Format Award for Here, The Doors Don’t Know Me.
“The four global winners represent the best photos and stories on the most important and pressing issues of 2022,” said Brent Lewis, chairman of the global jury and picture editor of The New York Times, in a statement. “You also help to continue the tradition of what is possible with photography and how photography helps us see the universality of being human.”
The four global winners were selected from more than 60,000 entries submitted by 3,752 participants from 127 countries.
Previously announced regional winners included Maya Levin for her image for AP showing Israeli police beating mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was fatally shot while discussing an Israeli military attack in the West Bank reported. In response to international pressure, the Israeli armed forces admitted that one of their soldiers probably shot the prominent correspondent. The IDF denied that the shooting was premeditated and declared the case closed.
Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Emilio Morenatti, who lost a leg while reporting in Afghanistan, received an honorable mention for a series of images of people in Ukraine who have suffered amputations as a result of the Russian invasion.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine