Ukrainian photographer Yevhen Maloletka wins World Press Photo competition

Ukrainian photojournalist Yevhen Maloletka became one of the laureates of the 2023 World Press Photo award. He was recognized for a series of pictures from Mariupol, besieged by the russian occupiers.

The international photo contest announced the regional laureates and published their works on its official website.

An independent jury selected 24 winners from over 60,000 works of 3,752 photographers from 127 countries of the world.

Maloletka was among the winners in the Europe category. Together with him, four other photographers became laureates, two of them with photos of the war in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian was awarded for a series of pictures called The Siege of Mariupol. The photographer recorded the consequences of the russian airstrike on the Mariupol maternity hospital on March 9, 2022, mass burials, the moments when russian shells hit and their victims.

"This story depicts the reality of the russian attacks on Mariupol without resorting to tragedies and other visual possibilities. The series is full of rare and historical images from different angles and shooting points, which flawlessly convey the price civilians pay for the war. Each image made a special impression on the jury. They were amazed by how a Ukrainian photographer risked his life to gain access to visual images of russian fighters and make these images available to the world. This story will emerge as a collection of impressive iconic images of the war that is still ongoing," – this is how the jury explained the victory of Maloletka's works.

Photographer Alkis Konstantinidis was also recognized in this category for the work "Yana and Viktor." The author took it after the russian shelling of Kharkiv. On it, a woman cries over the body of her murdered father.

In addition, the jury noted the series of photographs, "War Wounds" by photographer Emilio Morenatti. On them, the author depicts people who suffered amputations due to the russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The World Press Photo Contest is free and open to all professional photographers in photojournalism and/or documentary photography. Every year, it honors the best journalistic and documentary photographs created in the past year.

In December 2022, Yevhen Maloletka became the photographer of the year, according to The Guardian. Before the full-scale russian invasion, he documented events in Kazakhstan but returned home in January due to the growing threat of a major war. At first, he was based in Kharkiv, and then as part of the Associated Press team with Mstyslav Chernov and Vasylysa Stepanenko, he went to Mariupol. For 20 days, the team documented the crimes of russia but had to leave because the occupiers started looking for photographers. After Mariupol, Maloletka continued to work in hot spots: Kharkiv, Izyum, and Kherson.

In October, the works of Chernov and Maloletka from Mariupol were awarded a prize at a French competition. And in May, they became laureates of the Heorgiy Gongadze Award.