The World Through a Lens

A gaggle of smiling young girls cluster around Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, taking photographs of each other with the prime minister. His giant face gazes solemnly past his admirers at circus performers, Congolese rebels and couch potatoes.

This eclectic mix of people are all subjects of prizewinning photographs from this year's edition of the World Press Photo contest, currently on display at the Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art's White Hall. The gallery's ample lighting and decidedly spare decor provide a backdrop free from distractions, focusing attention on the year's most striking images from photojournalism, which were honored at the award ceremony in Amsterdam in April.

Upon entering the room, visitors are confronted by a row of nature photos, including a potent and somewhat disturbing magnified image of the various microscopic fauna that teem in a mundane sample of seawater, invisible to the naked eye. Other shots offer piercing views into a world apart from Moscow: fighting in war zones, vine jumping in the African jungle and tracking polar bears in the Arctic.

World Press Photo's annual contest has drawn impressive submissions from some of the best photojournalists since its inception in 1955. Competition winners in past years include the iconic image of a self-immolating Buddhist monk, shot in 1963 by Malcolm Browne for The Associated Press, and the historic shot of a Tiananmen Square protestor who single-handedly brought a column of Chinese tanks to a halt, captured by Charlie Cole for Newsweek in 1989.

World Press Photo Platon's shot of Putin won the portrait prize.

For 2008, the jury selected a scene from the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan by British photographer Tim Hetherington as World Press Photo of the Year. The shot depicts a soldier covering his despairing, exhausted face with his hand as he slumps back onto an embankment after a ferocious battle. The captivating image, with its dark hues and blurred focus, conveys the intensity of the war and emotions of one of its participants.

For the local crowd, the stunning close-up portrait of Putin, which graced the cover of Time magazine as it named then-President Putin Person of the Year for 2007, is proving a hit. Although it did not win the grand prize, the work by the English-Greek photographer Platon took first place in the portraits category.

Showing raw, intense, and sometimes provocative images is the norm for World Press Photo exhibitions, so it should come as no surprise that the annual world tour was not allowed in Moscow until 1988 during the period of glasnost.

"We have a policy that if the authorities object to any of the images being shown, we don't do the show," said World Press Photo representative Micha Bruinvels, describing the all-or-nothing nature of the exhibition that has insured artistic coherence and integrity throughout the years, often at the expense of ubiquity.

Russia has not tried to censor any images and has hosted the exhibition most years since the opening in the late 1980s. China, on the other hand, has at times been excluded on the basis of its taking issue with certain pieces in the collection. However, the show will go on this summer in Shanghai, said Bruinvels, "[Chinese authorities] have given us no problems, ... Not this year, anyway."

World Press Photo 2008 runs to July 14 at the Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art, located at 1 4th Syromyatnichesky Pereulok, Bldg. 6. Metro Kurskaya. Tel. 917-3436. www.winzavod.ru