In 2025, World Press Photo marks its 70 year anniversary; a milestone which provides the opportunity not only to look back at the remarkable history of the organization, but also to examine how the images World Press Photo awarded and helped to give a global platform over the past seven decades have shaped the public’s understanding of the world.
To mark the occasion of this anniversary, and as part of a series of special events across 2025, a major exhibition, What Have We Done? Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo, curated by artist and photographer Cristina de Middel, will take place in several locations. The world premiere of the exhibition will take place from Saturday 20 September 2025 until 19 October, at the Niemeyerfabriek in Groningen, and is hosted by Noorderlicht —one of the Netherlands’ leading platforms for photography and lens-based media. It will also be shown in Johannesburg, South Africa, at Market Photo Workshop from 20 September until 19 October.
Running alongside the exhibition presented in Groningen and Johannesburg, there will be pop-up festivals featuring a dynamic lineup of industry experts for a program of talks, panel discussions, and interactive sessions. Bringing together local photographers, critical thinkers, and audiences, these festivals will invite you to learn how photographic images communicate and influence understanding, explore how they address assumptions, biases, and narrative frameworks, and engage in conversations about how visual storytelling shapes society. In Groningen, the event takes place on Saturday, 20 September at the Niemeyerfabriek, welcoming, among other speakers, photographers Ruth Ossai, Andrew Esiebo, photography historian, curator, and author Saskia Asser, and executive director of World Press Photo, Joumana El Zein Khoury. In Johannesburg, the pop-up festival will take place on Saturday 20 and Wednesday 24 September. Confirmed speakers include acclaimed photographers Cedric Nunn, Jodi Bieber, Neo Ntsoma, Sethembiso Zulu, and visual artist Zanele Muholi.
Reflecting on the 70th anniversary has brought World Press Photo back to its extensive archive spanning seven decades of stories that have been powerful vehicles of change. They’ve helped raise awareness of critical global issues and to shed light on little-known but important stories. Still, delving deeper into the archive, World Press Photo has also had to confront the unintended consequences of their choices, whether from assumptions made, to stereotypes that may have been perpetuated, or voices that were underrepresented. This exhibition is an invitation to reflect on the various recurring visual patterns that are to be found in different eras and to start a dialogue.
The exhibition features over 100 photographs from those working across the 70 year period – from Horst Faas, Don McCullin, David Chancellor, Eddie Adams, and Steve McCurry, to Johanna Maria Fritz and Sara Naomi Lewkowicz. This exhibition is an invitation to rethink not just how visual language has evolved but how we, as viewers and citizens, should learn to read images with a sharper and more critical eye. This tension between new tools and old habits raises a crucial question: If the ways we capture and share images have changed, why do we continue to tell the same stories in the same way? What do these recurring images say about what we choose to see—and what we ignore?
The exhibition is organized around six recurring visual patterns identified in World Press Photo’s extensive archive:
- Weeping Women and Men Rescuing
The stories told in the archive often follow a pattern: women weep, men rescue. These repeated images aren’t random – they reinforce traditional ideas about who’s vulnerable and who’s strong. We see tear-streaked female faces, frozen in grief, while men are captured mid-action, carrying the wounded, giving orders, pulling others from danger. Without saying a word, these pictures shape how we think about gender roles during disasters, conflicts, and tragedies. - Emotional Soldiers and Debris
Press coverage of war often follows a familiar script, shaping perception rather than revealing full reality. White soldiers, predominantly, appear in the archive in moments of exhaustion or contemplation – images that humanize them while leaving their actions on the battlefield unseen. Soldiers with darker skin are more frequently shown in combat, reinforcing narratives of aggression and dehumanization. These choices create an imbalance in documentation, influencing who appears as a victim and who is framed as a threat.
At the same time, destruction is often aestheticized. War debris transforms into striking compositions, distancing viewers from the human toll of violence. This visual approach echoes Hollywood’s cinematic language, where conflict is dramatized and romanticized, making it easier to digest.
By emphasizing soldiers’ emotional burdens while abstracting the consequences of their actions, these images shape a narrative that simplifies war, making it familiar rather than unsettling. - Being a Man and Being a Woman
Media representations create distinct visual worlds for men and women. Men consistently appear as figures of action and authority – triumphant athletes, determined leaders, protective forces during crises. These images celebrate physical strength, decisive movement, and professional achievement.
Women, by contrast, occupy more limited visual roles. They appear as decorative elements, emotional responders, caregivers, or objects of desire. Even when portraying professional women, visual framing often emphasizes appearance over competence. In tragedy, women become symbols of suffering rather than agents of change.
These visual patterns reflect deeply embedded storytelling traditions. Repeated across decades of news imagery, they normalize specific gender expectations – reinforcing who acts and who reacts, who shapes events, and who experiences them. These contrasting visual languages don’t merely reflect society but actively shape our understanding of who belongs in which spaces and roles.
- Black Skin and The Dark Continent
Western media and culture has long framed Africa as an exotic and unknowable place – a dark continent rather than a Black one. This perspective is reinforced through recurring visuals: leaders portrayed in ways that undermine their authority, an overwhelming focus on war, famine, and suffering, and a scarcity of stories that build respect, nuance, or confidence in a continent far more complex than these narratives suggest.
Equally persistent in the World Press Photo archive is a fascination with Black skin itself. Close-ups linger on its texture as if observing something unfamiliar, echoing colonial-era representations where African bodies were treated as specimens rather than individuals. This aesthetic curiosity, combined with a limited and repetitive visual language, continues to shape how Africa and its people are perceived, reducing a vast and diverse reality to a narrow and distorted frame. - Silhouettes and Shadows – The ‘Wow’ Moment
Photographers are trained to see what others miss — a fleeting silhouette, a momentary shadow, a perfect collision of form and light. Whether capturing the ecstasy of a goal or the chaos of a war zone, their skill lies in freezing time at its most expressive. This pursuit of the decisive moment — that impossibly balanced instant — is what gives photography its power, and its pleasure. But the same tools that elevate one kind of story can complicate another.
The use of beauty — of carefully composed frames, cast shadows, dramatic contrasts, and aesthetic precision — in images of conflict or suffering raises difficult questions. When does visual impact deepen our understanding, and when does it risk turning pain into spectacle? In these contexts, beauty can create distance, rendering horror strangely palatable, even poetic. It can help make sense of chaos — or obscure the truth of it. - Fire and Smoke
Fire and smoke have long been symbols of chaos and transformation – whether in ancient myths, biblical visions of hell, or the burning cities of history. In photojournalism, they serve as unmistakable markers of crisis, turning moments of conflict and disaster into powerful, almost elemental imagery. A cloud of smoke on the horizon signals destruction before we even know the details.
But fire doesn’t just document events – it shapes how we remember them. Its presence in an image adds weight, a sense of urgency, and sometimes even a kind of tragic beauty. As these visuals repeat over time, they become part of an established language of drama, reinforcing how we picture upheaval and loss.
Cristina de Middel explains, “For 70 years, World Press Photo has documented our visual history. This exhibition is an invitation to rethink not just how our visual language has evolved but how we, as viewers and citizens, should be learning to read images with a sharper and more critical eye. If history repeats itself—and it does—then the way we narrate it has to evolve. In seven decades, the three words that define this award have transformed completely: World, Press, and Photo don’t mean the same in 1955 as they do today. This exhibition acknowledges that shift while asking where we go from here.”
Joumana El Zein Khoury, Executive Director, World Press Photo, says, “This exhibition is inspiring, critical, mind-opening, reflective, and hopeful. It offers a fresh take not only on the World Press Photo archive but also marks the first time we invite an external curator to explore our history in this way. We recognize that this exhibition presents just one perspective. Just as people interpret the same image in different ways, archives too can be viewed through many lenses. By examining recurring visual patterns, our aim is to create a space for collective reflection and open dialogue. In choosing to open up our archive in this manner, we also choose to be vulnerable. We do so with the conviction that acknowledging our past—its strengths and its flaws—is essential if we are to learn, evolve, and do better. By understanding where we’ve been, we can more thoughtfully navigate where we’re going.”
In the same location as What Have We Done? at the Niemeyerfabriek, in Groningen, the Netherlands, the exhibition Rauw Vermogen will also be presented: A new commission project by Noorderlicht, developed with seven emerging local photographers who are looking at the region’s future through the lens of its people, landscape, and labor. The venue is open to see both shows Tuesday to Saturday, 10-5 pm and Sundays 12-5pm. Closed on Monday.
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