World Press Photo is commemorating its 70th anniversary with a groundbreaking exhibition titled "What Have We Done? Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo." The landmark show, curated by acclaimed artist and photographer Cristina de Middel, will premiere on September 19, 2025, at the Niemeyerfabriek in Groningen, Netherlands, running until October 19 before traveling to international venues yet to be announced.
Rather than serving as a simple retrospective, the exhibition presents a critical examination of the patterns, assumptions, and storytelling traditions that have shaped press photography over seven decades. The show challenges visitors to confront the images that have long influenced global understanding of world events, inviting them to question how visual narratives are constructed and consumed.
The exhibition features over 100 photographs spanning from 1955 to the present day, showcasing iconic works by legendary photojournalists including Horst Faas, Don McCullin, David Chancellor, Eddie Adams, and Steve McCurry. Contemporary voices are also represented through the work of photographers such as Johanna Maria Fritz and Sara Naomi Lewkowicz, creating a comprehensive dialogue between past and present approaches to visual storytelling.
De Middel's curatorial approach specifically examines recurring visual patterns that have emerged throughout World Press Photo's history. The exhibition highlights how certain motifs have repeatedly appeared across decades, including images of weeping women paired with men in action that subtly reinforce gendered concepts of vulnerability and strength. War photography is scrutinized for how it frequently humanizes some soldiers while reducing others to symbols of aggression, while aesthetic compositions of debris and destruction are examined for potentially romanticizing chaos and obscuring the human cost of conflict.
Among the notable images featured in the exhibition are Christopher Morris's 1989 photograph from the US invasion of Panama during Operation Just Cause, Corinne Dufka's 1996 image of an NPFL Patriotic Front fighter carrying a wounded comrade during Liberia's civil war, and Steve McCurry's haunting 1991 photograph of camels searching for water amid Kuwait's burning oil fields following the Gulf War. McCurry described his experience photographing the ecological disaster as "one of the most amazing experiences of my professional life," noting how "all of Kuwait seemed like an end-of-the-world scenario from a Hollywood production."
The exhibition also includes Eric Bouvet's powerful 1989 photograph capturing the chaos at Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral procession, where millions of mourners created such tumult that several people were crushed to death while many others fainted and suffered injuries. These images collectively demonstrate the evolution of visual language while reflecting on the ethical, cultural, and aesthetic choices that underpin photojournalism.
Cristina de Middel describes the exhibition as "an invitation to see with a sharper and more critical eye," emphasizing that "if history repeats itself, the way we narrate it must evolve." Her curatorial vision encourages viewers to move beyond simply admiring iconic photographs and instead challenges them to rethink how they interpret images, recognize recurring visual patterns, and question why certain stories and perspectives dominate global attention while others remain marginalized.
Joumana El Zein Khoury, Executive Director of World Press Photo, underscores the importance of this critical examination, stating that "examining recurring visual patterns opens space for reflection and dialogue, acknowledging both the archive's strengths and its limitations." The organization recognizes that this milestone anniversary provides an opportunity to honestly assess not only what has been achieved but also what may have been overlooked or misrepresented.
The exhibition's central premise revolves around the understanding that the past seventy years of World Press Photo images serve as mirrors reflecting society's biases, assumptions, and visual habits. From harrowing conflict coverage to intimate human moments, the archive has provided photographers with a platform to illuminate stories that might otherwise remain unseen. However, this exploration also confronts uncomfortable truths about which voices were underrepresented, which images reinforced harmful stereotypes, and which editorial decisions, however unintentional, shaped public perception in ways the press may never have anticipated.
At its core, "What Have We Done?" serves as both a celebration of photography's profound impact on global consciousness and a call to approach visual storytelling with greater awareness and critical thinking. The exhibition asks fundamental questions about the power of photography to shape understanding and challenges viewers to examine what we choose to see, what we have been shown, and ultimately, what we have done with that knowledge. As World Press Photo enters its eighth decade, this retrospective examination represents a commitment to evolving the practice of photojournalism for future generations.
