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Translation from french to english:

Spencer Platt, an American photographer of the news service Getty Images, gained World Press Photo Award 2006 for a photograph of devastations in Lebanon, announced on Friday in Amsterdam the organizers of the prestigious price of photojournalism.

The image shows a street of Beirut devastated at the time of the Israeli bombardments, through which a convertible with lebanese young people come passes to see the damage. The photo was taken on August 15th in the south of Beirut, at the first day of the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, whereas the first inhabitants of the city who had left it at the time of the bombardments, went back there.

"One does not weary oneself to look at this photograph. It contains the complexity and contradictions of the true life, in the medium of chaos. This photograph makes you exceed the obviousness ", estimated the president of the jury Michele McNally. Spencer Platt will receive its price and a reward of 10.000 euros at the time of a ceremony on April 22 in Amsterdam. This year, 4.440 professional photographers of 124 countries presented 78.083 photographs. The jury examined from January 27 to February 8.

On the whole, the jury decreed prices in 10 categories (Topicality, People, Everyday life, Portraits, Arts and spectacles...) with 58 photographers of 23 nationalities. In the Topicality category, the jury made the beautiful share with violences in the world, which sullied the year 2006 and show the bombardments in Lebanon, the refugees in Darfour, an explosion in Nigeria, confrontations in the West Bank, or a tourist in Tenerife helping a clandestine immigrant on the beach.

In the series category of photographs on a contemporary subject, the Spaniard Cendon, Agency France-Press, gained the first price, with a report in a psychiatric hospital in Burundi. "I am very happy. is a young photographer full with energy which carries a fresh glance on reality around him ", declared Marco Longari, chief of photo AFP for the East Africa.

In the Natural category, the Palestinian photographer of AFP Fayez Nureldine gained a second price for a photograph of migration of starlings carried out in Algeria. The ceremony of handing-over of the prices will be preceded by three days by conferences, of debates and projections. Oude Kerk (Old woman Church) where will be held the handing-over of the prices will shelter three exposures: photographs taken precedence, a selection of the work of Spencer Platt and a series of photographs over the climatic changes in Africa carried out by African photojournalists. The exposure will be opened to the public on April 24 to June 17.

Then, it will travel throughout the world and will be visible in 85 places. Created in 1955 by the Union of the Dutch photo-journalists (NVF) which wanted to give an international dimension to its annual contest, World Press Photo rewarded with the passing of years for the become images of testimonys of our time: a small naked girl burned with napalm running on a road Vietnamese, a bonze immolant herself by fire, a man alone in front of a column of tanks places Tienanmen, or Algerian broken sorrow ...


Thank You ...