2002 World Press Photo: Looking back with anger and joy
K. Basrie, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A cute face of a one-year-old Afghan boy is lying on a white cloth. His eyes, decorated with adorable eyelashes and well- shaped eyebrows are closed, but he's not sleeping nor even dreaming of entering a wonderland.
His little lips curve into a peaceful smile, as if he's both happy and somber for his short journey. The subtle natural lighting piercing through the refugee camp softly kisses the boy's innocent face that simply looks like a rhapsody for an au revoir.
Three pairs of hands, all with veins strongly visible, carefully cover the small body with a piece of white cloth, but the baby appears undisturbed. The Afghan refugee boy is dead!
He died of dehydration. The aging hands of his grieving family members that framed the top prize-winning 2002 World Press Photo are preparing for his burial at Jalozai refugee camp in Pakistan. The cloth is a shroud of unbleached white cotton used by Muslims to wrap a dead body before a funeral.
The picture was taken last June by Erik Refner, 31, a Danish army sergeant-turned-photojournalist working for the Berlingske Tidende newspaper. The well-composed black-and-white photograph is the World Press Photo of the Year in the world's premier contest for photojournalism.
For the outstanding image, Refner also collected a cash prize of 10,000 euros (more than Rp 80 million).
"It is simple, iconic and symbolic. It comes from a set explaining the plight of the Afghans and it is about something which goes to the root of our current travails.
"It points towards matters which need to be addressed and, with the benefit of hindsight, it reproaches us for having ignored Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. It also reminds us what a photographer is," Roger Hutchings, chairman of the panel of the 12-members jury, said in his foreword of the 2001 World Press Photo catalog.
That's the choice of the adult jury, which other members include photographers from Russia, the Netherlands, and National Geographic, picture editors of AP (U.S.), El Comercio (Peru), Sunday Times (South Africa), and Geo France (France), plus executives of Lookat Photos (Switzerland), Visa pour l'Image (France), Time South Pacific (Australia), Indian Express (India) and The Miami Herald (U.S.).
The other panel of jury, which consists of children arranged by The Netherlands-based World Press Photo Foundation -- the organizer, accredited their honor to a brilliant work of Aleksander Nordahl from Norway.
This color picture has at least two similarities with Refner's image: children and Afghanistan.
But Nordhal's image bears a true smile of a teenage girl standing close to a door with her eyes starring into the lens of a foreigner. The true magnet for the young juries is perhaps the girl's two older sisters -- also wearing a veil -- hiding behind the doorway in Northern Afghanistan.
Technically, the portrait is fine. The cracked paints of the door and the shade of the smiling girl are not distracted by the flash, which provides a strong gaze for a powerful expression from the eyes of her sisters.
Their eyes render viewers at least two meanings: afraid of the rules that young women are forbidden to appear unveiled in front of men, or they just refused to be pictured by a stranger.
But just like for any other art works, viewers, jury and the artists have their own perception and prejudices.
To arrive at the final results of the world's best photojournalists capturing the 2001 events, the jury of the 45th World Press Photo contest spent two weeks of intensive deliberation to judge 49,235 entries submitted by 4,171 photographers from 123 countries, including 92 participants from Indonesia.
According to Hutchings, the fine works of the talented photographers participating in the contest make their job "so difficult".
The number of images in digitized format has been doubled from the previous year's figure of 27.5 percent from the total entries is another stunning record. This time, the number reached more than half (55.7 percent).
Like in the previous competition, the contest is divided into nine categories: Spot news, general news, people in the news, portraits, sports, arts, science and technology, nature and the environment, and daily life. Each category has two parts: single and story.
As has been widely predicted, the winning prints for the first four categories are dominated by horror of the Sept. 11 tragedy, the bloody war in Afghanistan afterwards, and terror in Ramallah.
Hefner's work is also part of a story that won 2nd prize in the People in the News Stories category.
Regarded as the most prestigious international contest in professional press photography, the 158 prize-winning pictures are scheduled to tour some 60 countries this year, starting from Amsterdam last April, to inspire, inform and entice viewers.
In Indonesia, the pictures -- with the help of the Royal Netherlands Embassy -- have been exhibited at the Erasmus Huis in South Jakarta and are currently on display for the public in Semarang and Yogyakarta.
When the hot category fills with many shocking scenes, the arts colors the world 2001 diary with cool and humorous images.
Australian Narelle Autio won the 1st prize with his low-speed but clever angle of 11 young ballerinas -- with hands clutching each other -- going downstairs in a dim-light building after a performance in Melbourne.
In the sports category, the jury seemingly decided to take an angle different from today's popular norms. Here, golfer Tiger Woods is heavily framed by hundreds of golf enthusiasts in a wide-angle shot with harsh sunlight streaming from a 45 degree position.
An unusual but well-executed shot of a Chinese gymnast practicing by Jia Guorong of China News Service reflects the high standards for talent, sense of art, innovation, and mastery in photography required to win the contest.
Unlike in many previous years, prize-winning photos in the science and technology this time feature images snapped by a "simple" gadget. No moving fetus. No complicated laboratory works. No faraway stars.
The 2nd place is an ordinary reportage photo of half a dozen women waiting for cosmetic surgery for their eyelids, noses and chins at Bangkok's Yanhee hospital in Thailand. The only enticement of this "simple" picture is perhaps the white spot on the women's eyelid, nose and chin.
But just like in real life, simplicity is sometimes the key to victory.
In general, some of the shots worth the awards, while some others are questionable as they are "too" airy with distracting elements, with nowhere for the eye to settle, and nothing of particular interest to focus on.
The image of a Pakistani girl with a ballooning bubble gum on her lip and bending over in a shamed-looking face leaning on a bamboo fence is just one example.
But the winning images of the contest have at least recorded parts of the drama -- joy and pain -- in the universe in 2001 and sent the messages worldwide.