World Press Photo Exhibition 2022

The State Library is the first venue in Australia to see the stories that matter from around the world.

The annual World Press Photo Contest recognises and celebrates the best photojournalism and documentary photography produced over the previous year. This year, for the first time, the exhibition offers a more global and better geographic balance of perspectives. The 2022 Photo Contest applied a new regional strategy, changing the set-up of the annual contest and the judging to increase the level of international representation.

A regional system of six regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Central America, South America, and Southeast Asia and Oceania has been combined with a new contest model of four format-based categories: Single exposure photographs (Photo of the Year), Stories made up of 3–10 single exposure photographs (Story of the Year), projects on a single theme containing between 24–30 single exposure photographs (Long-term Project Award), and a new Open Format. The Open Format category allows a range and mixture of storytelling media of which the main visual content is still photography.

These categories welcome entries that document news moments, events and aftermaths, as well as social, political and environmental issues or solutions.

Selected by an independent jury out of 64,823 entries by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries, the 2022 World Press Photo Contest regional winners are 24 photographers from 23 countries.

Australian photographer Matthew Abbott is one of the four global winners (World Press Photo Story of the Year) with his photographs of the Nawardekken people, the traditional owners of Western Arnhem Land, using fire to rejuvenate the land.

Image credit: 'Saving forests with fire' © Matthew Abbott for National Geographic/Panos Pictures.