The retrospective exhibition can be visited until March 5 at the Cibeles Center Palace in Madrid.
Since 1997, Doctors of the World has held the Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Award annually. This project began two decades ago as a tribute to the memory of Luis Valtueña, Manuel Madrazo, Flors Sirera, and Mercedes Navarro, Doctors of the World volunteers murdered in Rwanda in 1997 and in Bosnia in 1995 while working on humanitarian aid projects.
The competition has become a benchmark in the world of photography, which seeks to celebrate humanitarian values and solidarity. It showcases real stories captured in images that become a testament to and condemnation of social injustice.
In other words, in these 20 years of humanitarian photography, the organization's spirit of fighting all diseases, including injustice, has been kept alive.
For this reason, Médicos del Mundo (Doctors of the World) has sought to commemorate the historical and human value of the Luis Valtueña Prize through a retrospective exhibition featuring 20 images from the winners of all editions. More than 4,000 photographers from over 80 countries participated in the exhibition, submitting more than 18,600 photographs.
This 20-year journey through 20 images becomes a timeline that demonstrates advances, such as the technical shift from analog to digital photography, but also reflects the sad timelessness of the consequences of human rights violations, armed conflicts, natural disasters, and social exclusion.
For this reason, this exhibition brings together portraits from the war in South Sudan in 1997, through the war in Iraq in 2004, and on to the ongoing war in Syria. Other themes are also presented, such as climate change, the importance of palliative care, and not-so-distant conflicts, such as evictions in Spain, the Melilla fence, or the border crossings undertaken by thousands of people seeking refuge in Europe. There is also space for snapshots that capture the smile of little Lokesh, showing off his new prosthetic leg, or the warm and sincere hug of a volunteer worker to a woman in Calcutta; these serve as a breath of fresh air and remind us of the need to fight for a just world.
Photos and text source: http://www.medicosdelmundo.es
