English Translation by Regula Staempfli & her programmed Die laStaempfli-Maschine Chat GPT, copyright English Version. First published in Die Weltwoche, Juni, Number 25/25.
2024: The World Press Photo Award goes to Mohammed Salem for “Palestinian Woman Embraces Her Niece.” The image: A veiled woman, seated, holding a dead child wrapped in white cloth. Imagine a modern Pietà, Mary holding the body of Jesus – but anonymous, politicized, accusatory. There is no redemption in the image. Only blame. The emotion is sacred, but the target is secular and has a name: Israel.
2025: Another award-winning photo from Gaza. This time by Samar Abu Elouf, showing nine-year-old Mahmoud Ajour, a boy who supposedly lost both arms in an Israeli airstrike. The image oft he boy shows no Hamas in the frame. No tunnels, civilian palestinians are not allowed to use. No context, only a shocking presentation of a boy without arms. Soft light. Hard message.
No facts. Only feelings and a tapping of Islamofaschism into Christian iconography – we see in the World Press Photos the „mater dolorosa“, the grieving mother holding her son 2023 and 2024 we see a supposedly „war victim in Vietnam-style“, similar tot he „Napalm Girl.“
Who is Mahmoud Ajour? Where is his family?
How did he get to Qatar? Why does no photo ever show a Hamas fighter? Or a tunnel entrance?
World Press Photo honors weaponized aesthetics without context with only one goal: Target Israel. The Photos are carefully composed, subtly lit and created for emotionally overwhelming effect. The World Press Photo are NOT journalistic documents but propaganda portraits, disguised as „information.“ There is a new war of Images and Hamas is winning, with the help of SRF, ZDF, ARD, ORF, BBC, N.Y. Times etc. The two World Press Photo Awards have three points in common: The victims are passive, beautiful, tragic, the enemy ist he same, the story and the propaganda behind it, remains untold. Major newspapers like Die Zeit und F.A.Z. print these images without a single information who made the photos, where, when and for whom. The newspapers demote journalism to layout assistants.
A not to the reader: Due to image copyright restrictions, I am unable to show the award-winning photographs discussed in this article. However, I have described them as accurately as possible for reference and critical context. You may view them on the official World Press Photo website or in archived press coverage – but I invite you to do so critically. Ask yourself:
Why was this the image chosen? What is missing? Who is not in the frame? Hier to the Original Article in German in “Die Weltwoche. 9/2025 https://regulastaempfli.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/WEW_25_056_KUNST_REZ.pdf