"Swiss Press Photo 13" - the winners
Keystone photographer Laurent Gilliéron has won this year’s grand prize at the «Swiss Press Photo 13» exhibition for a photo series on the bus accident in Valais. Photographs of the year’s most significant events will be on display at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich through June 3.
Gilliéron was honored with the highest award in Swiss press photography for the second time after 2005. The main prize is endowed with 20,000 Swiss francs. The series of the Keystone photographer discreetly documents the mourning after the serious bus accident in Valais. The photographer described the scene in front of the tunnel entrance after the bus accident as very impressive. "I didn't know what had happened," Gilliéron said Thursday during the media tour. But the five or six helicopters had made him suspect something bad, he said.
The photographer took the picture from a bridge about 200 meters from the tunnel entrance. His second picture, awarded in the "topicality" category, shows a crying girl with a flower in her hand. Gilliéron photographed it as the victims' relatives waited to board the bus to travel to the accident site. The picture was widely publicized in the international press.
Gilliéron is a real press photographer, Michael von Graffenried told the media. "He is ready for action around the clock." The winning picture is proof of that, he said. Von Graffenried is a photographer himself. He had launched "Swiss Press Photo" 23 years ago.
"Photographers are being cut away"
Marco Castellaneta from the National Museum emphasized how important press photography is - "today, when photographers are being cut everywhere." He added that the exhibition was also intended to show what important work photographers were doing. For the exhibition at the National Museum, 173 photographers submitted a total of 2,825 images in six categories. An international jury selected the winners. The Swiss Prize for Press Photography is funded by the Fondation Reinhardt von Graffenried. The exhibition, curated by Ricabeth Steiger, displays the photos in large-format light boxes. "With this display, we are very close to the media," von Graffenried said. Today, he said, those images are viewed on iPads or other tablets, where they also glow brightly and in color. "These
Presentation is almost avant-garde."
Roger Federer's fight against the wasp
The winning image in the "Sports" category is a great snapshot. Roger Federer is taking cover from a wasp. In the shot taken by Reuters photographer Michael Buholzer, you can see the tennis star fending off the small insect with his hand and racket.
In the "Portrait" category, the winner was Daniel Tischler, a photographer who took quirky photos of quirky people. They show unconventional lone wolves in their own, equally quirky four walls.
In the "Art" category, winner Valérie Chétel traced the dreary charm of an abandoned dance studio for the Bund.
In the "Everyday Life and Environment" category, the first prize went to Steeve Iuncker of the Tribune de Genève newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland for a series on drunken youths in the Parc des Bastions - and the paramedics standing by at the park entrance.
Dominic Nahr, a young Swiss photographer who has just been accepted by the renowned international photo agency Magnum, won in the "Foreign Countries" category with a report from Sudan. The category winners each receive 2,000 Swiss francs. (Luzia Schmid/SDA)
All winning images, as well as the second and third place works can be found on Swisspressphoto.ch
