Press Photo of the Year 2022
Reality and its people emerge through the dramatic, funny and memorable moments from last year captured by the country's best press photographers.
The country's best press photographs and photographers are chosen every year in the Danish Press Photo of the Year competition, and the Royal Danish Library is once again the setting for an exhibition of the best shots of the year.
The country's best press photographs and photographers are chosen every year in the Press Photo of the Year competition, and once again the library is the setting for an exhibition of this year's best shots. The exhibition shows all the nominated works in the many categories.
Testimony from a dramatic year
2022 was a year full of dramatic events that pushed the Danish press photographers to the limit. In the exhibition, you can see their best shots from the year's events. A year when, for the first time since the 1990s, there was war in our immediate area. It has been documented in all its horror and with a sensitivity that opens our understanding of the sacrifices that war requires. On Danish soil, there were elections and an endless summer of festivals, which were brutally broken when a deranged young man opened fire in the Field's shopping centre on a Sunday on Amager. It was news without warning, which required a quick reaction.
The Press Photo of the Year was taken on Danish soil
The shooting in Field's is precisely the subject of the winning image in the main category Press Photo of the Year. Anthon Unger wins the category with a picture that also wins the category News Denmark, with i.a. this reasoning from the jury:
"The picture is fantastically well photographed, because the photographer has succeeded in actually taking a photograph - and not just coming home with a record of the situation. Here is the moment you capture, and then you have to live with the fact that the picture is not quite perfect. One could of course have wished that the people stood more freely. But it has not been possible in the situation to hang around to make the perfect photo, and it may well happen to us anyway.”
Photo: Jacob Erhbahn/Politiken
Jacob Erhbahn is press photographer of the year - for the fifth time
This year, the judges have chosen to award the title of Press Photographer of the Year to Jacob Ehrbahn from Politiken, who is awarded for the fifth time, having won the title as recently as last year as well as in 2001, 2012 and 2014.
This year he also receives a 2nd prize in the category News Abroad, and was nominated for the prize as one out of five with his picture of the Ukrainian refugee waiting with his child at a railway station. This year's jury had the following to say about the photo when they chose him as Press Photographer of the Year:
"It is a somewhat iconic image with a special calmness and beauty about it, which is very touching. It's beautifully told, and it's great that it's b/w, which shows the photographer's versatility. It is one of the pictures you take with you from 2022."