Judges at the Visa pour l'Image festival of photojournalism, held annually in southern France, have awarded this year's top prizes to three Palestinian photographers covering the conflict in Gaza.
The main prize for news reporting, the prestigious Visa d'Or News award, went to Mahmud Hams of French news agency AFP.
In a statement issued after the prizes were announced at a ceremony in the French city of Perpignan on Saturday night, Hams said: "I spent my childhood in Gaza, and in 23 years of photojournalism, I have witnessed every war, every conflict there.
"But this war is unlike any other, without precedent from the very first day."
Hams, who finally left Gaza with his family in February, described "incredibly difficult conditions" faced by reporters, with "no red lines and no protections for anyone".
"I hope the photos we take show the world that this war, and the suffering, must end," he said.
'Hostile reactions'
The Rémi Ochlik Visa d'Or award, named for the French war photographer killed on assignment in Syria in 2012, went to Loay Ayyoub for his work in Gaza for The Washington Post.
The 29-year-old Palestinian accepted the honours from Egypt, where he now lives as a refugee.
Reserved for young photographers, the €8,000 prize is sponsored by the city of Perpignan. But this year, the town's mayor Louis Aliot – a member of the far-right National Rally party – refused to participate in the awards ceremony, stating that he was "uncomfortable with the coverage of this war" and would have preferred the prize to go to "a journalist entirely independent of Hamas".
The festival's curator, Jean-François Leroy, told RFI that such antagonism was unprecedented in the 36 years of Visa pour l'Image.
"Never have we had such hostile reactions except over the Israel-Hamas war," he said.
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Off-limits to international press
As well as an exhibition of Ayyoub's work titled The Tragedy of Gaza, this year's festival also features West Bank, a series on the other Palestinian territory by Russian photojournalist Sergey Ponomarev.
But foreign journalists remain rare in the Gaza Strip, Leroy points out. "It's worth noting, because it's pretty unusual, that the territory is completely sealed off, completely closed to the international press, so we're only working with Gazan photographers – of whom there are very few."
The jury also picked a third Palestinian photojournalist, Samar Abou Elouf, for its Visa d'Or Daily Press award. She was honoured for her coverage of Gaza published in The New York Times.
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Speaking at a video conference before the ceremony, Ayyoub said it was "absolutely essential" for international journalists to go to Gaza – "firstly to document the war, but also because I think it would protect us a bit more from the [Israeli] army".
At least 116 journalists and media workers have died in Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas in response to its attacks on 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Ayyoub dedicated his prize to "all the journalists killed in Gaza while doing their job".
Among the other photographers honoured at the festival were Katie Orlinsky, who won best feature for her series on disappearing caribou herds in Alaska and northern Canada, and Hugh Kinsella Cunningham, who took the humanitarian prize for his reporting on civilians displaced by fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The lifetime achievement award went to American photojournalist Paula Bronstein.
► Visa pour l'Image runs in Perpignan until 15 September 2024.
