Spotlight on world affairs

Swiss Press Photo 2022 | 6.5.2022 - 26.6.2022
World Press Photo 22 | 6.5.2022 - 6.6.2022

The National Museum is showing the best press photographs from Switzerland and around the world, allowing visitors a contemplative glimpse behind the headlines.

Press photographers are the eyes of the global public. In the two exhibitions “World Press Photo 2022” and “Swiss Press Photo 22”, the best global and national press images of the past year are on display. The exhibitions allow visitors to step outside the usually frenetic pace of world events and take a moment to quietly contemplate them, to observe and reflect on these events from new and unfamiliar perspectives.

While “Swiss Press Photo” presents around 90 pictures in the existing categories of News, Daily Life, Swiss Stories, People, Sports and World, the format of “World Press Photo” has changed this year. To avoid too much emphasis on Western perspectives, the competition has been reorganised into six regional qualifying rounds. These regions – Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Central America, South America and Southeast Asia / Oceania – now have their own jury, which selects the winners for each region. The winners are then judged by a global panel, to select the four overall winners.

There has also been a change to the categories in the “World Press Photo” exhibition. There are now only four categories, but they are thematically open: single-exposure photographs (Singles), stories made up of 3-10 single-exposure photographs (Stories), projects on a single theme containing between 24 and 30 single-exposure photographs (Long-Term Projects), and the new category Open Format, which allows a mixture of photographs with various media such as illustrations, videos, animations or music. The exhibition presents around 120 photographs from the winning projects.