#Monomad Challenge - World Press Photo 2023

Good evening, #Monomad friends

On Oct 6, 2021 I made a post in this community about Word Press Photo. A little over two years later, and in the 2023 edition, today I managed to go to the last day that the exhibition would be open. Taking place in exactly the same place as in 2021, I was extremely lucky to be able to visit with the same friends as two years ago!

You know how I like coincidences... Many things can change before our eyes, but there are many that fortunately remain unchanged or can be strengthened. Friendship is a value and an asset that I can never do without. It's one of the most valuable things we can have and grow in this world, from the moment we are born until the moment we leave this reality.

As one of the most iconic and globally recognised photographic exhibitions, the photographs are not captures of beautiful moments or paradisiacal landscapes... Contemporaneity, the rawness of reality, the harshness of the atrocities that are committed, the asymmetries in which this world develops and lives, are the biggest and strongest theme of this exhibition. Of course, two of the photos that shocked me the most were is "Retrieving the Dead", by Mauk Kham Wah and "Yana and Victor", by Alkis Konstantinidis. In which Yana Bachek bitterly mourns the death of her father Victor Gubarev, brutally murdered in yet another bombing raid on 18 April 2022 in Kharkiv, Ukraine - her partner and her mother, Yevgeniy Vlasenko and Lyubov, desperately try to console her in the face of such a cruel and abominable act of cruelty... Killed at the age of 79 while out just buying bread...

How often we have everything so easy, and we don't even realise that just over 4,000 kilometres away, there are still those who, 695 days after the first day of the war, still dream of peace.

^{One of the many entrances to Parque dos Poetas, Oeiras}

^{like the boy in the photo, we are invited to immerse ourselves in a reality that is not visible on the surface}

^{The instinct of any living being... to protect itself. We all seek shelter, comfort, security...
Unfortunately, it's not accessible to everyone everywhere}

^{One of the best photos in the exhibition. I still remember when it was shown at the time, and I saw it first in a Telegram group that I had at the time, and then in the news blocks of all the generalist channels... It's amazing how these scenes still occur today in so many places around the world. Exposing the greatest fragility ever... human life}

I hope you enjoyed my post here in the B&W community

Bem Hajam 🍀

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Photographic edition with PhotoScape X