Stories behind the images

Jane Phare checks out the World Press Photo exhibition in Auckland.

Faced with a terrifying, roaring wall of snow and rock bearing down on him, photographer Roberto Schmidt had time to fire off just three shots before diving into his tent as an avalanche slammed down on Base Camp.

The partially buried Columbian/German photographer was later rescued by a Sherpa guide and Schmidt went on to shoot an award-winning series of photos showing the frantic rescue effort at Base Camp, where 20 people died and scores more were injured.

They are images that conjure up the old saying -" a picture is worth 1000 words," the notion that a single photo can convey a message or story more effectively than words. And so it is with this array of photos in the 59th World Press Photo exhibition, images that portray the worst - and the best - of humanity.

Up in the peaceful, old-world charm of Smith and Caughey's top floor, the 145 images - selected from 82,951 photos by 5775 photographers - capture the terror, desperation, hopelessness, beauty, love and joy of people's lives, people who mostly live far away.

From the bizarre cult of the Kim family's North Korea to the desperate faces of refugees, and victims of war fleeing the violence, the exhibition covers the extremes of the world today.

With each photograph, there is a back story. Take photographers Warren Richardson's winning entry (the World Press Photo of the Year), a haunting, black-and-white photo showing a baby being handed through rolls of razor wire to a pair of waiting hands. The child was with a group of Syrian refugees who had hidden in an orchard at night, avoiding Hungarian border police and being gassed with pepper spray before finding a way through.

And Syrian photographer Abd Doumany focussed his lens on children as they arrived in a makeshift hospital in the city of Douma, casualties of an air strike - a tiny, bewildered girl, her head bandaged, her clothes covered in blood; the bloodied face of a screaming boy; a distraught father cradling the body of his young daughter, killed in the air strike.

And just as shocking are the images Portuguese photographer Mario Cruz captured of Koranic "boarding schools" in Senegal, known as daaras, where near-starving children are kept in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, beaten and sometimes locked in chains.

But this exhibition is not all about destruction and sadness. On the same walls hang nature and animal images of extraordinary beauty, and human images of hope: the naked, swollen bellies of two gay women, married to each other, who are pregnant at the same time; children leaping from tall trees into the Tapajos River, home to the Munduruku people in the Brazilian Amazon; the delighted faces of the Ebola Survivors' Football Club in Sierra Leone.

But even the shocking, harshly compelling images in this exhibition are not to be missed; it is photojournalism that will make you thankful to be living in New Zealand.

World Press Photo exhibition, Smith & Caughey's (level 6), 253-261 Queen St, Auckland until July 24.

Monday - Wednesday, 9.30am - 6.30pm; Thursday - Friday, 9.30am - 9pm; Saturday, 10am - 6.30pm; Sunday, 10.30am - 6pm. Not recommended for children under 12.

www.worldpressphoto.org

Find more Lovebites of Auckland city here