world press photo

The World Press Photo 2009 exhibition is currently on display in Paris at the Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.This famous annual exhibition presents press photographs that have been selected and awarded by a jury of photojournalism experts.

This year, the American Anthony Suau won the first prize with his shot of an officer inspecting an empty house, due to evictions linked to the subprime crisis.

Detective Robert Kole of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office enters a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following mortgage foreclosure and eviction. He needs to check that the owners have vacated the premises, and that no weapons have been left lying around. Officers go in at gunpoint as a precaution, as many houses have been vandalized or occupied by squatters or drug addicts. Towards the end of 2007, the severity of losses to US banks incurred over sub-prime mortgages was beginning to emerge. In the first months of 2008, rising interest rates together with increasing unemployment and a slowdown in the housing market, meant that many borrowers could no longer afford payments on their homes. Banks involved heavily in such debts were threatened with collapse. In the following months the financial crisis spread worldwide. 

Suau started his career at the Chicago Sun Times in 1976 and later joined the Denver Post. In 1985, he moved to New York City to work for Black Star agency. He was a contract photographer for Time magazine between 1991 and 2009. Suau was one of the co-founders of the non-profit collective Facing Change: Documenting America, which was founded in 2009 by a group of social minded photographers and writers to document the issues facing the United States during a time of economic crisis. 

Anthony Suau has won many awards, including two World Press Photo of the Year awards, in 1988 and in 2009. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his images of the famine in Ethiopia, and in 1996 he was the recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the war in Chechnya. In 1985 and in 2005 he was awarded the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in New York.

He has been based in Europe for 20 years and returned to live in New York in 2008.