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A photo of a young boy seriously injured in an Israeli attack in Gaza received the “photo of the year” from World Press Photo on April 17.
The image captured by the Palestinian photographer based in Doha Samar Abu Elouf for the New York Times presents Mahmoud Ajjour, which was seriously injured while fleeing an Israeli attack in Gaza City in March 2024, according to World Press Photo. The winning photo was selected in a pool of winners of the world press photo competition in 2025, announced in March.
Ajjour lost one of his arms and had the other mutilate in an explosion as he turned to urge his family, said the world press photo in a press release, adding that the family was “evacuated to Qatar where, after a medical treatment, Mahmoud learns to play games on his phone, write and open doors with his feet.”
“Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prostheses and live his life like any other child,” said World Press Photo.
Elouf, which was evacuated from Gaza in December 2023, now lives in the same complex of apartments as Mahmoud and other Gazans in Doha.
The executive director of World Press Photo Joumana El Zein Khoury, in a press release, described the winning image as “a silent photo that speaks loudly”.
The organization said that the war had made a “disproportionate assessment on children”, citing December 2024, the United Nations believes that Gaza had the greatest number of children amputated per capita in the world.
“He tells the story of a boy, but also a broader war that will have an impact for generations,” said Khoury. “Looking at our archives, in the 70th year of the photo of the global press, I am faced with too many images like this. I remain endless to the photographers who, despite personal risks and emotional costs, record these stories to give us all the opportunity to understand, sympathize and be inspired by action.”
See the other winners of the 2025 World Press Photo Competition
The superior photography was followed by two finalists: “Night Crossing” by John Moore, who showed that “Chinese migrants warm up in cold rain after crossing the American-mexic border;” And “dry in the Amazon”, of Musuk Nolte, representing a young man bringing food to his mother, who lives in the village of Manacapuru, who faces an intense drought, although she is in the largest tropical forest in the world.
“This image, both from another world and intimate, portrays the complex realities of migration on the border, which is often flattened and politicized in public speech in the United States,” said photo of the global press about “Night Crossing”.
“The droughts in the Amazon”, as for those, highlights the impact of climate change on a village which was once accessible by boat, but due to drought, forces the young man to walk roughly a mile and a quarter along a dry bed in the Amazon.
“The striking contrast of dry and deserted scenes in the largest tropical forest in the world makes the absence of vigorously visible water,” said World Press Photo about the image.
What is global press photo?
Founded in the Netherlands in 1955, World Press Photo is a non-profit organization which “defends the power of photojournalism and documentary photography to deepen understanding, promotion of dialogue and inspires action”.
Two Winners from the Netherlands
Two additional Winners from the Netherlands were also chosen, notably “Prins de Vos” for Mika and Marijn Fiddler for the image of the training of Bodybuilder Tamale Safalu in front of his house in Kampala, Uganda.
The president of the World Jury, Lucy Conticello, said that the members of the jury “were looking for photos that people can start conversations.”
Conticello said that when the jury sat down to choose the “photo of the year”, three subjects, namely conflicts, migration and climate change have proven to be the photo pool “which define the photo edition of the world press in 2025”.
“The photo of the year is a portrait of a boy wearing a tank top; he faces a window and a hot light shines on him, throwing a soft shadow on one side of his face,” said Conticello in a press release. “His young age and his beautiful features, really contrast with his melancholic expression. You then realize with a shock that he misses his arms.”
2025 World Press Photo Contest Winners
In March, the photo of the world press announced the winners of the world photo of the 2025 press with the winning selection presenting some of the best photojournalism and documentary photography in the world.
Forty-two winners, nine more than last year’s total, were chosen from more than 59,000 admissions received from 3,778 photographers from 141 countries, World Press Photo said in a press release.
Winning photographers were located in countries around the world, from Bangladesh, from Colombia to Russia and were awarded according to the region in which they were.
The selection was made for the first time by six regional juries, and the end winners were then chosen by an independent world jury made up of the presidents of the regional jury and the president of the world jury, the organization said.
The key themes of this year winning selection range from politics, gender and migration to conflicts and the climate crisis.
Winning photographs and stories behind them will be presented in an exhibition that will move around 60 locations worldwide this year, notably London, Rome, Berlin, Mexico, Montreal and Jakarta with “millions others” seeing the “online winning stories”, said World Press Photo.
See all the winning photos here.
Saman Shafiq is a news journalist trendy for USA Today. Join it at sshafiq@gannett.com and follow it on X and Instagram @ saman_shafiq7.
