A photograph from the series Almost Revolution by Zsolt Szigetváry, a photographer at the Hungarian News Agency. The series of photographs about the anti-government protests in the autumn of last year have won a top prize in this year's World Press Photo competition.
Szigetváry's series of ten photographs, entitled Almost Revolution, won the first prize for news stories in the general news category.
Szigetváry shot his photographs in square format and in black and white. Asked why he chose this combination, Szigetváry said he gave much thought to how he could create a series of images of the autumn civil unrest in Budapest which would speak for themselves, without appearing staged. In the end, he decided on square format and black and white film. The square format "lends a tight format to the pictures" and the black and white elevates the drama of the event, he said. With the combination, he was "able to capture a somber, sometimes apocalyptic series of images."
Szigetváry is not the first photographer at MTI to win a World Press Photo competition. The news agency's Lajos Soós and Endre Friedman have also won first prizes.
World Press Photo, founded in 1955, is an independent, non-profit organization with offices in Amsterdam. It organises the world's largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. After the contest, the prizewinning photographs are assembled in a traveling exhibition which is shown at more than 80 venues around the world. In Hungary, Budapest's Museum of Ethnography has hosted the exhibition for years.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
