European Region Honorable Mention
The Barcelona-based photographer Emilio Morenatti has been highlighted with an honorable mention by World Press Photo in the Europe region, in the 2023 edition of the most prestigious photography contest in the world and the author will be present among the activities of the World Press Photo exhibition 2023 in Barcelona.
Morenatti has obtained this distinction with his report “War Wounds”, where he portrays people who suffered amputations as a result of the war in Ukraine during 2022. It is a project that he has carried out for the Associated Press, an agency of which he is Head of Photography for Spain and Portugal. By highlighting this report by Morenatti, the jury of the Europe region of the World Press Photo 2023 expressed their willingness to thus open a space “to debate the civil cost of war” and reflect on these “lives forever affected by violence”.
We talked about “War Wounds” with the author, born in Zaragoza, Spain (1969), with large experience in armed conflicts and who has received important awards as the Pulitzer and the Ortega y Gasset in photography.
By Teresa Vallbona and Carlos G. Vela
From World Press Photo they have chosen your project “to highlight the lasting consequences of the war”…
This work is a metaphor for the amputation of a country when is invaded, a country whose lands are taken. And this amputation is reflected in the people I have photographed, who have been injured for a lifetime, because the amputation is permanent. For me, an invasion and an amputation have a similarity that I have investigated and discussed with all the patients that appear in my images.
How did you find the protagonists of the project?
I went to look for people in remote hospitals, near and not so close to the front. For example, Yana, an 11-year-old girl who lost both her legs, was in a hospital with her mother, who also lost a leg, and basically the only person attending both of them was the girl’s twin brother…
And this is what I was doing, looking for profiles. They are all civilians who have suffered firsthand the consequences of a war. They have various amputations, some very severe, and they were not neglected, but they were in deplorable situations because of the nowadays sanitary conditions in the country.
Thus, until putting together a series of images that correspond to that series of war wounded that is simply based on civilians who suddenly are left with a broken life.
The jury highlighted your “care and empathy” as a photographer in this report. How are you linked to the project?
I have a huge attachment with the subject since I lost my leg in Afghanistan (the author was attacked while traveling with US forces in Kandahar). Since then, somehow, I have focused my objective on vulnerable people, with whom I feel empathy beyond my work as a professional, photographer and journalist. In my case, being a person with a disability makes me involuntarily look for that disability, that vulnerability in society that we have to photograph, and that tragedy that a war can generate. I think that the photojournalism that I do is very useful to make visible that pain, that drama that exists in wars or in any situation of calamity.
This is not the first time that World Press Photo has highlighted your work. Before obtaining this honorable mention, you have already been awarded two others, in 2007 and 2008, as well as a 3rd award in Single Photographs in 2013. What does this new distinction from the international contest mean to you?
I am very happy for two reasons. Basically, because it is the series that represents me the most, the war wounded. And also because it is a series that has no additives. It is very basic, very specific moments of monitoring people. There are no conceptual elements in the photographs, but only interest in informing.
The World Press Photo is a great award and our absolute reference as photojournalists. It always has been, despite its different changes in specific years. I refer to some drifts that I would also like to mention, from when journalism has not been his main course.
Therefore, someone like me, who is 100% a photojournalist and does not touch conceptual photography or any artistic edge, I feel very honored. So I’m doubly happy, because I see that pure and hard photojournalism is still rewarded, which is what we do and defend.
The World Press Photo 2023 exhibition in Barcelona will be held from November 9 to December 17. Tickets will be on sale next October.
