Touching Mosul image wins AFP photographer award nod

Ivor Prickett, who has two of his shots from the Iraqi city, in the running for the prestigious title

Asearing image of a Venezuelan protester who caught fire during clashes with riot police has won AFP photographer Ronaldo Schemidt a nomination for the World Press Photo of the Year award.

The picture by the Mexicobased photographer for Agence France-Presse is among six images taken by five photographers nominated for the prestigious annual prize, the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam revealed yesterday.

The winner will be announced on April 12, and recognise the photographer “whose visual creativity and skills made a picture that captures or represents an event or issue of great journalistic importance in the last year”, it said.

Finalists

The four other finalists include Patrick Brown of Panos Pictures, for his shocking shot of the bodies of drowned Rohingya refugees; Adam Ferguson of the New York Times with a sombre veiled portrait of one of the Boko Haram victims and Reuters photographer Toby Melville, with his image of a passerby comforting an injured woman after the Westminster Bridge attack in London.

Rounding out the nominees is Ivor Prickett, also from Panos Pictures, who has two of his shots taken in the Iraqi city of Mosul in the running for the prestigious title.

“The best visual journalism is not of something, it is about something. It should matter to the people to whom it speaks,” said Lars Boering, managing director of the World Press Photo Foundation.

Reuters An image nominated for the Picture of the Year at the World Press photo contest shows an unidentified young boycarried out of the last Daesh-controlled area in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq.