World Press Photo of the Year 2021 – The First Embrace

Next Gallery

The 2020 Getty Images’ Top 10 photos from around Australia

The First Embrace

World Press Photo of the Year

The First Embrace
Mads Nissen, Denmark, Politiken/Panos Pictures

The independent jury of the 2021 Photo Contest selected Mads Nissen’s photograph, The First Embrace, as the World Press Photo of the Year. In the winning image, Rosa Luzia Lunardi (85) is embraced by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza, at Viva Bem care home, São Paulo, Brazil, on 5 August 2020.

Nissen said about his image: “To me, this is a story about hope and love in the most difficult times. When I learned about the crisis that was unfolding in Brazil and the poor leadership of president Bolsonaro who has been neglecting this virus from the very beginning, who’s been calling it ‘a small flu,’ I really felt an urge to do something about it.”

This was the first hug Rosa had received in five months. In March, care homes across the country had closed their doors to all visitors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing millions of Brazilians from visiting their elderly relatives. Carers were ordered to keep physical contact with the vulnerable to an absolute minimum. At Viva Bem, a simple invention, ‘The Hug Curtain', allowed people to hug each other once again. The new coronavirus had first appeared in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and by January 2020 had begun to spread around the world. On 11 March, the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. The disease—transmitted mainly via close contact, respiratory droplets, and aerosols—could be fatal, and people over the age of 70 were one of the groups considered most vulnerable to the disease. Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed claims about the severity of the pandemic and the danger posed by the virus, undermined quarantine measures adopted at state level, and encouraged Brazilians to continue working to keep the economy afloat. Brazil ended 2020 with one of the worst records globally in dealing with the virus, with some 7.7 million reported cases and 195,000 deaths.

Mads Nissen is a Danish photographer based in Copenhagen. After graduating in 2007 from The Danish School of Journalism he moved to Shanghai to document the human and social consequences of China’s historic economic rise. Since 2014 he has worked as a staff photographer at the Danish daily, Politiken.