Look: Haunting Canada boarding school image wins World Press Photo contest

A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada, won the prestigious World Press Photo award Thursday. The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times. "It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory. It inspires a kind of sensory reaction," Global jury chair Rena Effendi said. "I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world.''

Police agents arrest a man while his wife and family resist, during evictions of people from the San Isidro settlement, in Puerto Caldas, Risaralda, Colombia. The World Press Photo Contest recognises the best photojournalism and documentary photography of the previous year. This year, the winners were chosen out of 64,823 photographs and open format entries, by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries.

Kritsiopi Panayiota, 81, reacts as a wildfire approaches her house in Gouves village on Evia island, Greece, on 8 August 2021. After a long heatwave period, the hottest weather Greece had seen for 30 years, thousands of residents were evacuated by boat after wildfires hit Greece’s second-largest island.

A male adult tiger is crossing the road in the Tadoba Andhari tiger reserve, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India. Single tigers occupy from 15 to 30 sq km of territory.

Asita Ferdous sits inside her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 10 November 2021. She is the director of the Ariana Cinema but is not allowed to enter the cinema because the Taliban ordered female government employees to stay away from their workplaces.

Humaira Mustapha, whose two daughters were kidnapped by shooters at the government girls' secondary school, cries at her home the day after the abduction of more than 300 schoolgirls in Jangebe, a village in Zamfara state, north-west Nigeria, in February 2021. More than 300 schoolgirls were snatched from dormitories by shooters in the middle of the night on 26 February, in the third known mass kidnapping of students since December.

A protester throws back a teargas canister fired by security forces during a march demanding an end to military rule, in Khartoum, Sudan, in December 2021. Demonstrators marched through Khartoum and the neighbouring cities of Omdurman and Bahri, demanding political power be transferred to civilian authorities.

Palestinian children hold candles during a rally amid the ruins of houses destroyed by Israeli strikes in Beit Lahia in May 2021.

World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award: Amazonian Dystopia by Lalo de Almeida (Brazil), for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures. The Amazon rainforest is under great threat, as deforestation, mining, infrastructural development and exploitation of other natural resources gain momentum under President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmentally regressive policies. Since 2019, devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has been running at its fastest pace in a decade. An area of extraordinary biodiversity, the Amazon is also home to more than 350 different Indigenous groups.

A black kite (subspecies Affinis of Milvus migrans) flies above a cool-burn fire lit by hunters earlier in the day, in Mamadawerre, Arnhem Land, Australia, May 2, 2021. The raptor, also known as a firehawk, is native to Northern and Eastern Australia, and hunts near active fires, snatching up large insects, small mammals, and reptiles as they flee the flames.

An aerial view of the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, Altamira, Para, Brazil, Sept. 3, 2013. More than 80% of the river's water has been diverted from its natural course to build the hydroelectric project. The drastic reduction in water flow has an adverse impact both on the environment and on the livelihoods of traditional communities living downstream of the dam. Photo: Lalo de Almeida for Folha de Sao Paulo/Panos Pictures/World Press Photo via AP

Members of the Munduruku community line up to board a plane at Altamira Airport, in Pará, Brazil, on 14 June 2013. After protesting at the site of the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, they traveled to the national capital Brasilia to present their demands to the government. The Munduruku community inhabit the banks of another tributary of the Amazon, the Tapajos River, several hundred kilometres away, where the government has plans to build further hydroelectric projects. Despite pressure from indigenous people, environmentalists and non-governmental organisations, the Belo Monte project was built and completed in 2019

A billboard with a message of support to President Bolsonaro stands alongside the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Altamira, Pará, Brazil, on 20 July 2020. It was financed by local farmers. Agribusiness is one of the president’s main pillars of political support

A boy rests on a dead tree trunk in the Xingu River in Paratizão, a community located near the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, Pará, Brazil, on 28 August 2018. He is surrounded by patches of dead trees, formed after the flooding of the reservoir

This image provided by World Press Photo is part of a video composed of digital and film photographs titled Blood is a Seed (La Sangre Es Una Semilla) by Isadora Romero which won the World Press Photo Open Format award, and questions the disappearance of seeds, forced migration, colonization, and the subsequent loss of ancestral knowledge.

World Press Photo Story of the Year: Saving Forests with Fire Matthew Abbott, for National Geographic/Panos Pictures. In 2021, fires ravaged different parts of the planet, from Greece to Siberia. Saving Forests with Fire by Matthew Abbott shows how the Nawarddeken people, the traditional owners of West Arnhem Land in the north of Australia, live with and strategically use fire to protect their environment.

Antonella studies via Zoom, using her mother’s mobile phone, in her room at home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June 2021. Her parents are keen that she keeps up to date with her education and, along with other parents, organise group studies and virtual get-togethers via WhatsApp.In August 2020, Antonella vowed to cut her long hair only when she could resume in-person classes at school, which had been suspended due to the Covid pandemic. She said: “When I finally go back to school, they will know I’m different; I feel like a different person.” On 25 September 2021, she cut her hair the weekend before she returned to classes.

Kashmiri women cross a stone wall to join the funeral of Rameez Ahmad, a police officer killed in a gun attack, in Yachama, north-east Srinagar, India in December 2021. Photo: Dar Yasin/AP/c/o World Press Photo 2022

Open format award: Blood is a Seed: Through personal stories, La Sangre Es Una Semilla questions the disappearance of seeds, forced migration, colonisation, and the subsequent loss of ancestral knowledge. The video is composed of digital and film photographs, some of which were taken on expired 35mm film and later drawn on by Romero’s father. In a journey to their ancestral village of Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia, Romero explores forgotten memories of the land and crops and learns about her grandfather and great-grandmother who were ‘seed guardians’.

An embroidered photograph of Hajja Oum Mohamed, 53, in her garden in Gharba Valley. Embroidery by her Photo: Rehab Eldalil/c/o World Press Photo 2022