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A picture is worth more than a thousand words. The unofficial theme of this year's World Press Photo exhibition, which made its U.S. debut on June 27th at the United Nations, was uttered more than once at the special viewing reception last Thursday evening, sponsored by Getty Images. Before cutting the ribbon and officially opening the exhibit to the public, Piet de Klerk, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations, spoke about the importance of pictures. "Here in the UN we are an organization of words. World Press Photo features pictures of what our debates are about."

The five year old traveling exhibition, which will make its rounds in 55 different countries, is scheduled to run through July 17th at the UN headquarters in New York. The annual photo display is a compilation of winning photographs from the World's Best Press Photographs of 2007 contest in Amsterdam. Each year, an independent international jury selects from entries in ten different categories which are submitted by photojournalists, agencies, newspapers and magazines from all over the globe.

Kiyotaka Akasaka, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information at the United Nations kicked off the event by congratulating the contest winners. According to Akasaka, the exhibition tackles "a broad range of issues," which he says is "the best and most useful tradition of photojournalism."

15 out of 59 prize winners were American photographers, including Getty Images photographer John Moore, who won 1st prize for his coverage of the assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in the "Spot News" category. The New York Times photographer Mike Kamber received third prize in the same category for a story on American soldiers during a search operation in Iraq. Jeff Hutchens of Getty Images won 2nd prize in the Nature category, singles with a picture of US Geological Survey scientists examining an ice bear.

This year's premier award went to British photographer Tim Hetherington who also spoke at the reception. "It is appropriate that the World Press is held here in the UN. We [as photographers] deal with the world outside of ourselves like the UN. Pictures like these wake us up." Hetherington won for his photograph of an American soldier fighting in Afghanistan.

A particularly arresting series of photographs are those by Pieter ten Hoopen who won 1st prize for "Daily Life Stories." Hoopen shot images of the town of Vladimirskve, near Nizhny Novgorod, western Russia. The town, which is known for its folkloric lake, is largely forgotten to the rest of the country and alcohol abuse is a growing epidemic. Featured in one of his photographs is a teenage boy smoking a cigarette that hauntingly resembles Edvard Munch's "The Scream." With rich deep blues, blacks and grays, the boy's face is out of focus and from a distant window in the background a light dimly escapes into the otherwise black landcape. The child's outward expression at the foreground of the image is prideful, but his figure as a whole communicates an underlying confliction and fear. The enveloping darkness seems to reflect both the boy's helplessness, and the helplessness of the town at large. The photograph screams to the viewer more for recognition than it does for help.

Consistent with the intention of the exhibition, which, as UN representative Piet de Klerk describes as a mission "to pierce through our armor of indifference and indolence," the many photographs that dress the exhibit floor including Hoopen's offer more than a thought provoking gaze into another world, but act as a reflection of our own world. "They deserve our attention because their fate is fragile and too closely tied to our own," says Klerk. Like the disarming boy in Hoopen's photograph, we cannot shield ourselves from our surroundings, and thus as Klerk points out, "we should not be allowed to get away by looking away."

The photo exhibit is sponsored by the World Press Photo Foundation, Getty Images, the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations, Canon, TNT, and the UN Department of Public Information. World Press is an independent, non-profit organization with offices throughout Amersterdam. Founded in 1955, its main objective is to spawn international support for professional press photographers.