When the list of the first regional winners of the World Press Photo Award (WPPA) 2025 was published on March 27, there was a huge outcry. The reason: Mikhail Tereshchenko, a reporter at ‘s state news agency TASS since 2017, was among the winners of what is probably the most prestigious prize in the field of .
Tereshchenko had photographed mass protests in Georgia against the pro-Russian government. The protesters were reacting to alleged electoral fraud and calling for a pro-European course.
Critics questioned the WPPA’s decision to honor a TASS photographer, while photographers from suffer from repression. Tereshchenko openly shares Russian propaganda, describing for example in an interview with TASS the storming of the Ukrainian city of as a form of “liberation.”
The jury was accused of irresponsibility, a lack of sensitivity and even possible influence by Russian propaganda.
The world in pictures
The World Press Photo Award has been presented by the Amsterdam-based foundation of the same name since 1955. In 2025, 59,320 images were submitted by 3,778 photographers from 141 countries.
This includes photographers from Russia and other non-liberal countries, as well as photojournalists working for state media: “We do not exclude photographers from any country. We are aware of the reality of state propaganda, but we believe that photographers working in countries with little press freedom can also create meaningful works,” the foundation said.
Expert juries from six regions sift through these images, with the first round being anonymous to ensure that the entries that make it through to the next round are selected solely on the basis of their visual quality. The award website states that, “As each jury of experts knows their region well, their political, social and cultural knowledge is also taken into account in their decisions.”
More is known from the second round onwards — such as the names of the authors — and in the fourth and final round there is further information on “motivation, type of project (whether commissioned or personal project) and funding.”
Seven winners are chosen per region — three each in the “Single Photo” and “Story” categories and one for “Long Term Project.” This makes a total of 42 winners. As is the case every year, there are some lyrical, intimate pictures. Most often however, photojournalists train their cameras on the world’s conflicts and tragedies.
The Tereshchenko case
One can rule out the possibility that the jurors were not aware of who they were honoring in the “Story” category for the European region: the Moscow photographer Mikhail Tereshchenko, who works for TASS and is renowned for his expressive, drastic imagery. TASS, or the “Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union,” has supplied the world with high-quality images for over 100 years now, although these are often far from being journalistically neutral.
Tereshchenko has been reporting from eastern since 2015, also as an “embedded” correspondent for the Russian armed forces. Tereshchenko was present during the storming of Mariupol and submitted his pictures for the World Press Photo Award back then.
Last year, however, Tereshchenko was not on the Ukrainian-Russian front, but in Georgia. Here, on behalf of TASS, he documented the clashes between mainly young, pro-European Georgians and the police.
There was violence on both sides during the protests, and that is exactly what he captured on film, says Tereshchenko. “It was pretty tough footage. Both the government and the police, as well as the demonstrators themselves, often resorted to various means.” The assignment in Tbilisi was a business trip and the correspondent had to undergo security training beforehand.
His gloomy, nocturnal images do not read clearly; they allow for a range of interpretations. In view of the fact that Russia is trying by all means to bind Georgia to itself as a former republic of the Soviet Union, the question arises as to whether a TASS correspondent is the ideal person for a report on the conflict in Georgia.
“For me, it’s above all strong pictures,” said a respected Bavarian landscape photographer to DW, who was on the WPPA jury at the time and does not wish to be named here. “The special feature of good pictures is precisely this: They emancipate themselves from the author and speak for themselves.”
The Ukrainian art historian Lyudmila Bereznitsky, who was one of the first to present the work of the renowned Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov in Western countries, sees it differently.
“It’s like awarding for her great Olympic pictures in the middle of the Second World War,” she said, referring to the German filmmaker who directed several Nazi propaganda films.
In a statement, the WPPA jury said it was taking criticism and complaints about Mikhail Tereshchenko’s journalistic independence seriously and would “review them according to the process outlined in our procedures. Until this review is complete, we stand by the jury’s decision to award his project ‘Protests in Georgia’ and encourage everyone to see this work for themselves.” The WPPA did not respond to further inquiries from DW.
Photo of Russian troops paired with portrait of Ukrainian child
The jury’s pairing of two individual and disparate photos has also caused outrage. One shows a Ukrainian child traumatized by war, the other a wounded soldier, a Ukrainian who was conscripted to fight for Russian-backed separatist forces. According to the jury, the combination of the two photographs provides a “deeper, more nuanced view of a conflict with far-reaching global consequences.”
The works are by German photographers Florian Bachmeier and Nanna Heitmann.
Bachmeier, who commutes between Schliersee in Bavaria, Madrid and the rest of the world, accompanied an organization of volunteers in Ukraine in the immediate vicinity of the front line. He photographed six-year-old Anhelina in the village of Borshchivka in eastern Ukraine. She now suffers panic attacks and apathy due to her war experiences.
Nanna Heitmann, Magnum photographer and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Photography 2024, lives in Moscow. Her photograph shows a severely wounded soldier in an improvised underground hospital. The composition of the work draws a visual analogy to a dying Christ.
Ukrainian photographer Serhii Korovayny, quoted by German daily FAZ, described the work as an “unsympathetic, superficial manipulation constructed through formal similarity, which absolves ‘ordinary Russians’ — soldiers and civilians alike — of responsibility for the Russian war of aggression.”
The New York Times, on whose behalf Heitmann took the picture, defended the photographer: the soldier in the picture is not Russian, but Ukrainian, the US newspaper specified. “Nanna Heitmann’s work in Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine war has been an important window into a country where reporting has become increasingly dangerous.”
Lucy Conticello, chair of the WPPA jury, admitted to a judgment error in a press statement: “We should not have presented these two photos as a pair, as this suggests they should only be viewed and understood in dialog with each other.”
‘At some point, only stereotypes remain’
The awarding of a prize to photo artist Aliona Kardash, who comes from Siberia and has lived in Germany since 2017, has also been criticized. With her series “It smells of smoke at home,” the 34-year-old provides a long-term observation of her own family in the Russian hinterland.
Commenting the series in the FAZ newspaper, Ukrainian photojournalist Oksana Parafeniuk asked how Kardash could describe the work as being about the loss of home, since her family could simply continue to live there while Russia was destroying Ukraine.
The series was created as her personal reflection on her country’s invasion of Ukraine, Kardash told DW. The title is both an homage to the sweet smell of wood stoves in winter and a warning signal: yes, something is burning in Russia. Especially in view of the suppression of the free press and the ever decreasing number of Western journalists allowed to report from the country, Kardash sees photography as an opportunity: “Otherwise you lose all feeling for the country. At some point, all that remains are stereotypes.”
This article was originally written in German.
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