This is the best photo of the year, according to the World Press Photo Academy.
American photographer John Stanmeyer won the 57th annual World Press Photo Contest’s “Photo of the Year” with a picture (above) featuring eight African migrants on the shore of Djibouti city at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia.
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The photograph, which was shot for National Geographic, also won first prize in the Contemporary Issues category after 19 internationally recognized professionals in the fields of photojournalism and documentary photography convened in Amsterdam earlier this month to judge all entries.
“What we’re looking for in the winning image is the same quality you would look for in a great film or in literature–the impression that it exists on more than one level, that it makes you think about things you haven’t thought about,” said Susan Linfield, a jury member from the United States. “You begin to explore the layers not only of what’s there, but of what isn’t there. So many pictures of migrants show them as bedraggled and pathetic… but this photo is not so much romantic, as dignified.”
Click here to see the photos that Stanmeyer’s beat out for top prize.