There really is no better place to display press photos than a church. At least, as long as it is one of those Dutch churches like the one in Naarden. White plastered walls, no distracting statues and paintings. And yet that hallowed atmosphere that somewhat belongs to what all those winners of World Press Photo 2015 portray: terrible stories, glorious victories and mysteries that raise questions. So these narrative images replace what must have been on display before the Protestant iconoclasm, exactly 450 years ago next year: frescoes and images that told stories, that were meant to inspire fear, that were meant to convince people of the good in the world.
The partly by Canon and the National Postcode Lottery enabled exhibition of World Press Photo is now visiting Naarden for the eighth year. This puts this small North-Holland city in a league with Madrid, Tokyo, Toronto. And Zutphen, of course.
This year's exhibition is - once again - defined by disaster images. And this time they are not disasters and wars far away, but close by. According to the mayor of Naarden, even a bit too close by, because no fewer than four people who became victims of the attack on flight MH17, now over a year ago, lived in her municipality. The horror corner, as she described it, now contains images that will come very close for many local visitors. Indeed, the winning photo in the News category shows a victim of that disaster, still almost unscathed, seat belt on, in the plane seat, seemingly lying serenely in a wheat field.
Nice, though, that this year's winner has created a truly beautiful image of two men in loving stillness in a dark room. Here, horror lurks elsewhere. As soon as these two lovers step outside, they are in the middle of one of the gayest societies the world knows: Russia. In her speech, guest speaker Margriet van der Linden broke a lance for gay rights advocates, who are up against popular, religious and governmental opposition in more and more places around the world.
What people tend to forget about such a beautiful and chic exhibition as the one in Naarden is the fate of the photographers themselves. They are far from being well-paid men and women employed by the big news agencies, flying business class from five-star hotel to five-star hotel, meanwhile shooting pictures with state-of-the-art equipment. Many, and increasingly more, award-winning photographers are poverty-stricken freelancers who usually explore their surroundings heavily underpaid.
Raphaela Rosella, who won first prize in the 'Singles' category with a moving photo of a young girl in Australia, for instance, had to sell the camera she won with it again because otherwise she could not continue working. Such distressing situations are a thorn in the side of Lars Boering, director of World Press Photo since this year. That is why he is considering a plan to further serve photographers who participate. 'There is a lot of demand for World Press Photo images,' he said at the opening reception. 'So far, we only sell the posters of the exhibitions, and they sell like hot cakes. Why not also sell large-format prints of the photos to enthusiasts and collectors, and then in a limited edition at a high price? The money would benefit the photographers as well as the organisation.'
It might just be the egg of Columbus. After all, the internet has relegated press photos to commodities, which can only be kept from free distribution with the sharpest possible detection techniques and surveillance. Then a flight forward, towards exclusive and rare 'live' quality is not so crazy. In any case, it is a sign of World Press Photo's new direction in the 21st century.
Just a few years ago, such commercialisation would have been condemned.
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