World Press Photo 2025 Exhibition
The most prestigious photojournalism contest today is, without a doubt, the World Press Photo. Aimed at professional photojournalists, it annually recognizes the leading visual narratives of the moment and iconic individual photographs widely circulated in recent history.
On display until September 28 in São Paulo and October 5 in Brasília, later traveling to Curitiba and Salvador (see here the schedule for other countries), the World Press Photo 2025 exhibition showcases some of the most important photographs and documentary photo stories published last year.
Celebrating its seventieth anniversary, the 2025 edition, like the previous ones, highlights the major socio-environmental issues of the last two centuries: genocides, wars, migrations, unsustainable exploitation of the Earth, and climate change. Therefore, it is not a light exhibition, nor one that allows ignoring the human and environmental hardships that have been unfolding around the globe.
Jaidë – Santiago Mesa (Colombia)
The Brazilian edition of the exhibition places side by side the two main extreme climate events of 2024. Alongside with a historic drought in the Amazon region—preceded, for the first time on record, by another extremely dry year—there was also a period of very intense rainfall in the south of the country that left thousands of people homeless.
Drought in the Amazon – Musuk Nolte (Mexico)
Brazil’s Worst-Ever Floods – Amanda Perobelli (Brasil)
In addition to recalling the chaos caused by extreme droughts and rains in the north and south of the country in 2024, it also reveals major issues worldwide, such as the four cyclones that struck the Philippines in just 12 days between October and November 2024, and the civil war in Myanmar.
A Nation in Conflict – Ye Aung Thu (Mianmar)
With 42 award-winning photographs, the exhibition provides a mixed experience of contemplation and unease, through a carefully curated selection of contemporary photojournalism. Unlike previous exhibitions mentioned in the blog, the aim of World Press Photo 2025 is not simply to show what is beautiful, but what is intriguing, through photographs that are extremely well executed in all formal aspects. After all, that is the great challenge of photojournalism.
Aircraft on Flooded Tarmac – Anselmo Cunha (Brasil)