There's a strange contradiction in trooping through Smith & Caughey's shopping floors to reach the World Press Photo exhibition on the sixth level. The store is a picture of the quiet elegance of how the world used to be; it is accommodating some pictures of the turmoil of the world as it is now.
Smith & Caughey's old world setting is surviving the internet-led ravages of online shopping; returning to its dignified conservatism is a bit of a comfort after some of the photographs of man's extremism to man. However, the exhibition is notable for its expressions of hope. Even the harshest conditions and circumstances can awaken the human spirit - seen in this collection of the best news photographs from 2013, on its world tour.
Much of that comes from human conflict but you are reminded not just about how lucky we are in New Zealand but how people round the world can make the best of a bad situation. Like the overall winning photo - John Stanmeyer's National Geographic shot of immigrants in Djibouti holding their phones up to the night sky to pick up cheap coverage from neighbouring Somalia, so they can talk to relatives there. It works on three levels: starkly beautiful and lonely, it could be some sort of religious ritual; it also speaks of the global penetration of the mobile phone.
It also underlines the human ability to conquer adversity and there is plenty of that on show. Maybe the hardest-hitting comes from almost a year ago, the Westgate shopping mall massacre in Kenya by Somali extremists, in which 67 died and more than 175 were injured. Tyler Hicks' picture, published in the New York Times, of an armed Kenyan soldier stalking the four killers hits you like an unexpected blow to the stomach. The soldier is wide-eyed, all senses on full alert. He pays no attention to the body on the floor, surrounded by swirls of blood as the wounded man tries to drag himself to cover.
