An annual awards ceremony is held in the
Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. After the contest, the prizewinning photographs are assembled into a travelling exhibition. A yearbook presenting all prizewinning entries is published annually in six languages. In addition to selecting the
World Press Photo of the Year, the contest determines winners in the following other categories: Spot News, General News, People, Sports, Contemporary Issues, Daily Life, Portraits and Nature.
Recent winners New York-based photographer
Spencer Platt of
Getty Images won in 2006. His picture showed a group of young
Lebanese driving through a South Beirut neighborhood devastated by
Israeli bombings. The picture was taken on 15 August 2006, the first day of the
ceasefire between
Israel and Hezbollah when thousands of Lebanese started returning to their homes. In 2007, a total of 4,460 professional photographers from 124 countries entered 78,083 images in the competition. The winner was the British photographer
Tim Hetherington. In 2008,
Anthony Suau, of the US, won the World Press Photo of the Year for the second time (the first was in 1987). Amit Sha'al of Israel won third prize in 2011 in the category of Arts and Entertainment: Stories. During an exhibit in
Lebanon that year, World Press Photo was asked to remove Sha'al's photos because, according to the
General Security Directorate, Lebanon and
Israel were "in a state of war." WPP refused to censor the Israeli artist and shut down the exhibit ten days ahead of schedule. ==Exhibitions==