A little something different...for a change

This past week my mother and I had the opportunity to check this year's World Press Photo awards in Lisbon at Museu da Eletricidade.

From Malaysia airline's crash destructions, sports photojournalism, to a photographer who decided to use a drone to photograph American daily activities from above, this exhibition compiles a set of powerful testaments of lives surrounding us. Sometimes lives and situations which we ignored or others we knew about but never really looked in that perspective.

A circus monkey terrified as he watches his trainer coming his way; an Iranian mother holding her long missing son's clothes; a picture taken from above of a very full boat which has been trafficking desperate refugees into Europe across the Mediterranean sea; a collection of moments in the life of  a woman/ mother/ daughter with AIDS and the red picture of a Christmas ornament factory worker in China are some of the works still vivid in my mind.

To complete these amazing pictures you have a small description on the side which will context it. These descriptions are almost as important as the pictures. 
With them, you learn that the Chinese factory worker works for the biggest Christmas ornament producer in China for 12h a day, wearing nothing but a mask and a Santa hat to protect him from the red toxic fumes he is exposed to. Also he is under the impression that Christmas is a celebration resembling Chinese new-year.
You learn that animals use in circus is now forbidden in China even though many still ignore the law.
You learn that what you watched in Homeland is not so far from the truth, and that drones have dropped bombs over weeding’s celebrations, schools, and mosques and somehow you don’t recall hearing about it in the media.
You learn that there is a special school in Indonesia for transgender children who suffer from marginalization and discrimination in isolated communities.
You are reminded that gay people are facing discrimination in Russia.


I strongly recommend everyone to see this exhibition, it’s impossible not to leave the place untouched. 

Here is the website of world press photo

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