Colombian photographers recognized

Two Colombian photographers were among the 42 winners announced in the 2026 World Press Photo Contest, placing work from Buenaventura and Cúcuta in one of photojournalism’s biggest annual showcases. (worldpressphoto.org) World Press Photo said the 2026 contest drew 57,376 photographs from 3,747 photographers in 141 countries. The foundation said the winning work will be shown in its traveling exhibition, which opens in Amsterdam on April 24, 2026, and that the overall Photo of the Year will be announced on April 23. (worldpressphoto.org) The two Colombians recognized this year were Ever Andrés Mercado Puentes and Ferley A. Ospina, both awarded in the South America “Stories” category. Colombian newspaper *El Tiempo* reported their projects as portraits of culture, conflict and absence in different parts of the country. (worldpressphoto.org, eltiempo.com) Mercado Puentes won for “Manacillos: A Return to Life,” a project set in Juntas, an Afro-descendant community in Colombia’s Pacific rainforest that World Press Photo says can be reached only by a ten-hour boat trip up the Yurumanguí River. The work centers on the Fiesta de los Manacillos, a Holy Week ritual that blends Catholic practice with African spiritual traditions. (worldpressphoto.org) World Press Photo said Juntas was settled by descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the region in the 1700s and now faces pressure from illegal mining, logging and armed conflict. Its jury called Mercado Puentes’s essay “an important anthropological record” of a population it described as historically silenced. (worldpressphoto.org) Mercado Puentes is an Afro-Colombian documentary photographer born in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca. World Press Photo says his work has focused on human rights, peacebuilding, cultural heritage in Colombia’s mid-Pacific region, and the search for missing people. (worldpressphoto.org) Ospina won for “Name the Absence,” a project photographed in Norte de Santander that opens with a five-year-old girl, Valeria, playing behind a curtain in Los Patios. World Press Photo says the series examines fatherlessness through the photographer’s own family history after his father was murdered in the border region in 1999. (worldpressphoto.org) World Press Photo said Ospina’s work is rooted in the Colombian-Venezuelan border and the Catatumbo region, where he documents the human effects of migration and armed conflict. The jury said the project makes “absence tangible” through an intimate account of women-led households and the long afterlife of violence. (worldpressphoto.org) The South America jury said this year’s regional winners reflect politics, violence, resistance and resilience across the continent. In that lineup, the two Colombian projects stood out by turning local realities into broader stories about memory, community and what conflict leaves behind. (worldpressphoto.org) Each of the 42 winners receives 1,000 euros, inclusion in the official yearbook, international promotion and a place in the exhibition circuit, according to *El Tiempo*. For Colombia, that means two very different visual records of the country will now travel far beyond the places where they were made. (eltiempo.com)