Among the most known photos are Gunnar Tingsvall’s 1958 shot of Brazilian football star Pelé, Neil Armstrong’s photo of Buzz Aldrin and John Rooney’s shot of boxer Muhammad Ali.
World Press Photo has launched a limited-time print sale of select photographs to celebrate its 70th anniversary, to support the photographers who took them and to aid the foundation’s mission of advocating for press freedom.
The print sale, named “70 Prints for 70 Years” and open online until just before midnight November 26, marks the first time World Press Photo has offered a collection composed solely of winners from its prestigious photo contest and works from its Joop Swart Masterclass.
Each of the 70 images are printed at museum quality and in time-limited editions only available throughout the duration of the online sale and are being sold for $180 unframed and $300 framed. The organization is also selling seven handcrafted box-sets that include all 70 images for about $8,120.
Charlotte Zajicek, communications and projects manager at the World Press Photo Foundation, told Urgent Matter that the photographers behind the images will receive 50% of the proceeds, with the other 50% helping World Press Photo continue its mission to safeguard photojournalism worldwide.
Among the most recognizable prints in the sale are Gunnar Tingsvall’s 1958 photo of Brazilian football legend Pelé after winning the FIFA World Cup, Neil Armstrong’s photo of Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on the moon, and John Rooney’s famed shot of boxer Muhammad Ali standing over a defeated Sonny Liston.
“In making the selection, we wanted to showcase the incredible history of the Contest and of the visual culture it represents, and we also tried to choose images that people might like to display on their walls,” Zajicek told Urgent Matter.
“We knew immediately that some images would fit perfectly, but the challenge was to uncover some of the many, many gems buried in our archive. These images might not be household names, but there are so many remarkable, beautiful and historic photographs that deserve to be celebrated.”
She highlighted a photograph by Ahmad Halabisaz of an Iranian woman sitting alone on a chair in front of a busy square in Tehran, defying Iran’s mandatory hijab law, just days after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini.
Amini died in custody in September 2022 after she was arrested by Iran’s morality police for not properly wearing her job. Her death sparked widespread protests that teetered on revolution. Zajicek said the woman in Halabisaz’s photograph represents the “bravery of countless Iranians” who have risked arrest and violence by asserting their autonomy.
“At first glance it is a quiet, even understated scene but it encapsulates an extraordinary moment in contemporary history,” Zajicek said. “This image speaks directly to that moment. By sitting publicly without a hijab, the woman turns an everyday gesture into an act of civil disobedience.”
There are also several historical images of unarmed, peaceful protesters in the sale that “resonate powerfully across decades” and show the power of “quiet defiance,” Zajicek said, like Charlie Cole’s 1989 shot of a lone figure standing before a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square.
Zajicek said that photograph, widely known as Tank Man, has particularly “come to symbolize extraordinary individual courage in the face of overwhelming state power.”
“Similarly, Jonathan Bachman’s portrait of Ieshia Evans standing calmly as police officers in riot gear rush toward her during Black Lives Matter demonstrations captures that same clarity, dignity and strength in peaceful resistance,” Zajicek said.
In another first for World Press Photo, one of the prints in the sale features a collage of two photographs from Cuba by Ed van der Elsken, who is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery, that have never been sold together as a print.
Those two images originally a spread in Avenue Magazine’s publication of his Cuba Avenue reportage in 1967 and were previously sold as two separate images. Zajicek called it an opportunity to World Press Photo to provide something in the sale that had never been sold before for its audience.
Zajicek said that the selection process took place across multiple rounds in World Press Photo’s Amsterdam office. The organization hopes the final selection not only highlights its 70-year journey but also brings forward lesser-seen images from its archive that it believes deserve renewed attention.
“Over the seventy years since World Press Photo was founded, our mission has expanded well beyond the contest that launched us,” she said.
"The images in the sale reflect how photography, the photo industry, and questions of representation have evolved, and they remind us how visual journalism continues to illuminate both the past and the pressing issues of the present.”
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