World Photo Prize Revoked for ‘Misleading Information’
The judges of the prestigious World Press Photo competition have stripped an Italian photographer of his award, after he admitted one of his winning pictures was taken at a different location than he originally said.
Giovanni Troilo’s series of atmospheric photos portray scenes of life in the gritty, post-industrial Belgian city of Charleroi. He won first prize last month in the contest's Contemporary Issues Story category.
The images triggered heated online debate among photojournalists and a complaint from Charleroi's mayor that his city had been misrepresented. World Press Photo launched an investigation that cleared Troilo of staging photos.
“We now have a clear case of misleading information and this changes the way the story is perceived. A rule has now been broken and a line has been crossed,” World Press Photo managing director Lars Boering said in a statement.
The group said Troilo had acknowledged that one highly risqué photo was not actually taken in Charleroi. He insisted in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he did not mislead the judges, however.
“My work is a transparent, I have not deceived anyone,” he said.
“Mine is not a classic reportage, it is a story, is my story of the things I've seen, I know, I know that happen.”
In an interview with the New York Times, however, he admitted making what he called a technical error, but not an attempt to mislead. “I made a mistake, I can’t deny that,” he said.
Troilo says on his website that project, titled “La Ville Noire The Dark Heart of Europe,” depicts a small town that “symbolizes by itself the whole of Europe.
“The collapse of the industrial manufacturing, the rising unemployment, the increasing immigration, the outbreak of micro-criminality. The regression of the social welfare, the lack of a shared identity. This feature is a journey to the roots of my family, which moved from Italy to the district of Charleroi in 1956 to work in the steel industry.”
The image that was not actually shot in Charleroi depicts a group of naked women gathered around a fully nude man lying on a table. Troilo said it was a re-enactment of a painting. Full of graphic nudity, it is not safe for work, but you can view it here.
The New York Times reported that World Press jurors admitted disqualifying one fifth of the contest finalists because the images had been overly manipulated.
“Every year there is debate and discussion; this year I think we really, really had a lot of troubles,” Boering, the contest official, told the New York Times. “There was a huge amount of manipulation in the penultimate round. The jury was really shocked.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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