When we hear the expression “Press Photo Exhibition,” our first thought is that one year has passed again.

Now it is time again to recall the most important events, occurrences, and phenomena of the past year. To recall many things that happened within our borders, and to get a little glimpse of the outside world as well through the lens of some of the photographers.

For the 37th time this year, the visual content of the exhibition is composed of the awarded images of the press photo contest, as well as those not awarded but considered to be important or interesting by the organizer.

The photographers submit news images, photo reportage, portraits, photographs displaying the arts and cultural scene, sports photographs, as well as at times raw and painful images presenting social phenomena – and glimpses of reality often hardly or not at all noticeable on the surface – into the traditional categories of the contest. The above-mentioned categories, or subjects, are the ones, from which the juries traditionally select the grand prize images – which they considered to be the most outstanding – over the past decades.

The contest also has a very popular and spectacular category, for which world-renowned, successful nature photographers submit their often extraordinary but always astonishing and remarkable images.

Yet, the above list did not include the nature photography category, as beside the regular category prizes, these pictures have not really been considered for the grand prize before.

But something has changed this year.

We know that Hungarian photographers primarily focus on local events, problems, and social phenomena. This year, the global perspective also appeared next to the local in nature photography. We have received more photographs depicting environmental phenomena, mostly the results of global warming and pollution, than usually.

And it was not fruitless: first time in the history of the contest, the grand prize was awarded to a photo series that presents a very important phenomenon of our wider environment, the Earth as a whole. Even the spectacular photographs of the Nature and science category were surpassed by one image that brings attention to environmental pollution, the danger that threatens our planet’s fauna.

When setting up the material for the exhibition, we strove to emphasize the importance of these phenomena. It is a special honor that we could do this by showcasing these outstanding photographs. (Tamás Szigeti, curator)