World Press Photo Returns to Japan at Kyoto Shimbun’s Historic Printing Site

The World Press Photo 2024 Kyoto exhibition will be held from November 30 (Saturday) to December 29 (Sunday) at the basement level of the Kyoto Shimbun Building in Marutamachi, Kyoto, on the site of the former printing factory.

The World Press Photo exhibition, organized by the World Press Photo Foundation in the Netherlands, showcases the winning works of the World Press Photo Contest, one of the most prestigious photo contests in the world. Founded in 1955, the contest celebrates its 67th edition this year, with about 60,000 photos and projects submitted by approximately 4,000 photographers from 130 countries and regions. The winners in four categories—Single, Story, Long-Term Project, and Open Format—are chosen from six regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Central America, South America, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. This year’s exhibition will feature 24 regional winners’ works, along with several honorable mentions and jury special awards.

The exhibition, which marks the return of the event to Japan after three years, will showcase the works of approximately 30 winners from this year’s contest. Featured will be the World Press Photo of the Year, selected as the global winner in the Single category, which is a powerful photograph by Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Salem, showing a Palestinian woman holding the body of her niece in Gaza. The exhibition will also include images documenting the loss of innocent lives in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the suppression of civilians under Myanmar’s military regime, as well as photographs highlighting environmental issues caused by climate change. Additionally, from Japan, the work Threads of the Heart by Kyoto Shimbun reporter Kazuhiko Matsumura, which expresses the emotions and symptoms of a dementia patient, will be displayed as the regional winner for the Asia category in the Open Format division.

The venue for the exhibition, the basement of the Kyoto Shimbun building, was used as a newspaper printing facility from 1975 to 2015, and entry to the event is free. To cover the high costs of transporting the artworks and setting up the venue, while making these highly public news photos widely accessible for free, a crowdfunding campaign is currently underway. The campaign is being conducted on THE KYOTO Crowdfunding platform, managed by Kyoto Shimbun, and will be accepting donations until December 29 (Sunday). As part of the rewards for backers, a photo book titled WORLD PRESS PHOTO 2024 Yearbook, as well as guided tours of the exhibition hosted by Eiko Kataoka, a judge for the World Press Photo Contest, and Kazuhiko Matsumura, the winner of the 2024 Open Format Asia Regional category, are available.