Hug image is World Press Photo of the Year

Mads Nissen's picture shows an 85-year-old Brazilian woman getting her first embrace in five months.

The Hague: A photo symbolising “love and compassion” of an 85-year-old Brazilian woman getting her first embrace in five months from a nurse through a transparent “hug curtain” was named the World Press Photo of the Year.

The choice of a winning photo portraying the global pandemic was almost inevitable for the contest covering a year in which news around the globe was dominated by the virus that has killed nearly 3 million people.

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The image by Danish photographer Mads Nissen captured the moment Rosa Luzia Lunardi was hugged by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza at the Viva Bem care home in Sao Paulo on August 5.

A curtain of clear plastic — its yellow edges folded into a shape resembling a pair of butterfly wings — offers protection, as does the nurse’s face mask.

“This iconic image of Covid-19 memorialises the most extraordinary moment of our lives, everywhere,” said jury member Kevin WY Lee. “I read vulnerability, loved ones, loss and separation, demise, but, importantly, also survival — all rolled into one graphic image. If you look at the image long enough, you’ll see wings: a symbol of flight and hope.”

The image taken by Nissen for the Panos Pictures agency and the Danish daily Politiken also won first prize in the prestigious contest’s General News Singles category. “The main message of this image is empathy. It’s love and compassion,” Nissen said.

“It’s a really, really hard, grim situation and then in that horror, in that suffering, I think this picture also brings some light,” Nissen said at an online awards ceremony after being told he had won the award and the 5,000-euro ($6,000) prize that goes with it.

Second place in the category was a far more grim Covid-19 image — the body of a suspected coronavirus victim tightly wrapped in plastic in a hospital in Indonesia on April 18 by Indonesian photographer Joshua Irwandi.

Judges looked at 74,470 photographs by 4,315 photographers before selecting winners in eight categories including general news, sports, the environment and portraits.

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