On display in the exhibition is the winning image in this year?s World Press Photo contest: Reuters correspondent Finbarr O?Reilly?s photograph of the emaciated fingers of a child pressed against the lips of its mother at an emergency feeding clinic in Niger. 2005. The image was chosen as the best of 83,044 entries.
A Hungarian photographer, Tamás Dezső, was also awarded a prize in this year?s contest, in the Daily Life category. Other categories in contest are Spot News, General News, People in the News, Sports Action, Sports Features, Contemporary Issues, Portraits, Arts and Entertainment, and Nature.
World Press Photo is an extensive mirror on the modern world, an event important to both visual culture and historical scholarship. It may be stated without exaggeration that the exhibit is one of the most popular cultural events in Budapest, the Museum of Ethnography writes on its homepage.
World Press Photo is an independent non-profit organisation founded in the Netherlands in 1955 with the objective of supporting and promoting the work of professional photojournalists around the world. Over the years it has become an independent forum for photographic journalism in general, as well as a promoter of the free and unrestricted flow of information.
In achieving these aims, World Press Photo holds an annual photography competition, the largest and most prestigious in the world. Winning pictures are put on tour and are viewed by over a million people in thirty-five countries.
The exhibition is accompanied by a yearbook in seven languages that serves simultaneously as an exhibition catalogue and an intriguing independent document. As the organisation observes developments in the field of photojournalism and organises its regular events, greater emphasis is given each year to educational programmes.
At the opening of the exhibition, Mátyás Vince, who heads the Hungarian News Agency (MTI), presented the first issue of Fotós Szem, a new photo magazine the agency is launching.
The Museum of Ethnography is located at Kossuth Lajos tér 12, across the square from Parliament. In order to accommodate the large number of visitors expected to see the World Press Photo 2006 exhibition, the museum will be open every day of the week, including Monday.
Ticket prices for the exhibition:
Adults: HUF 1,300
Students and Pensioners: HUF 700
Holders of Budapest cards: HUF 1,050
Holders of Magyar Turizmus cards: HUF 650
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
