Catalan photographer Samuel Nacar among World Press Photo 2025 winners

World Press Photo exhibition will return to Barcelona's CCCB in November

Mohamed Khaled Krayem, free after seven years in prison for marijuana possession, finds his muscle memory instinctively reproduces the sleeping position he was forced to adopt in his crowded cell. Damascus, Syria, 15 December 2024. / Samuel Nacar for Revista 5W

Catalan News | @catalannews | Barcelona

First published: March 29, 2025 04:48 PM

World Press Photo will return to the Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture (CCCB) for the 21st time in November, with a Catalan photographer among the award winners.

Samuel Nacar (Barcelona, 1992) won in the Stories category for the West, Central and South Asia region for his reportage 'The Shadows Already Have Names' for Revista 5W.

The photo essay focuses on the survivors of Syrian prisons, who recount the torture they suffered during the regime of former president, Bashar al-Assad.

127_West, Central, and South Asia_Stories_Samuel Nacar_for Revista 5W — Relatives of people who have been missing for years crowd around a man transferred from Sednaya prison to the Ibn Al-Nafees Hospital. They are desperate for news, although he can barely speak. Damascus, Syria, 12 December 2024. / Samuel Nacar for Revista 5W

"I spent two months trying to publish this report worldwide, but no one wanted the story," Samuel Nacar said in a statement for the Photographic Social Vision Foundation. "Accepting rejection is fine, but when you are given recognition like this, it fills you with pride."

Nacar is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on migration, social conflict, and depopulation.

His projects explore two key aspects of migration: the impact on communities left behind after mass migration and migration routes as spaces of resistance, highlighting the lack of safe pathways and the hardships faced by those in transit.

World Press Photo 2025 is the 68th annual World Press Photo contest. 42 winners were selected by an independent jury out of 59,320 entries by 3,778 photographers from 141 countries. Of the 42 regional winners, 20 of them are local to the region where they shot, while their work covered 30 countries.

Photojournalist Luis Tato, born in Ciudad Real, Spain, and based in Nairobi, Kenya won in the Stories category for the Africa region for his project Kenya's Youth Uprising for Agence France-Presse.

The 2024 exhibition in Barcelona attracted a record 66,500 spectators. This year's exhibition will open on November 7 and run until December 14.

The World Press Photo of the Year 2025 will be announced on April 17.

128_West, Central, and South Asia_Stories_Samuel Nacar_for Revista 5W — A corridor of the infamous Sednaya prison, which could hold up to 20,000 inmates, and where military defectors and dissidents were subject to brutal beatings, electric shocks, and starvation. Damascus, Syria, 14 December 2024. / Samuel Nacar for Revista 5W

FOLLOW CATALAN NEWS ON WHATSAPP!

Get the day's biggest stories right to your phone