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Winners From the Past 50 Years

This shot by Mogens von Haven which won the first World Press Photo award in 1955.

1960: Yasushi Nagao captured the moment a student assassinates Japan's Socialist Party Chairman Inejiro Asanuma during a speech. The award allowed Nagao to travel widely, something not available at that time for many in Japan.

1963: While working for the Associated Press, photographer Malcolm Browne was in Saigon, South Vietnam, when Thich Quang Duc dramatically protested against alleged religious persecution by the government. Browne was overcome at the horror and smell of burning flesh.

1964: Don McCullin was covering the conflict in Cyprus for The Observer newspaper when he took this picture of a Turkish woman who has discovered her husband’s body.

1973: Many of the winners are controversial, as is this one, which shows the president of Chile, Salvador Allende, moments before his death during a military coup. The picture was sourced by Marvine Howe working for The New York Times, the photographer is unknown.

1976: Françoise Demulder of Gamma agency became the first woman to win the World Press Photo award for this picture of Palestinian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon.

1983: After an earthquake in Turkey, photographer Mustafa Bozdemir photographed Kezban Özer who found her five children dead, having been buried alive. Bozdemir says: "While her screams pierced my heart, it seemed like she thought her love could will them back to life."

1984: Pablo Bartholomew’s photo of a child killed by the poisonous gas leak at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal became "an icon of grief and greed in the face of industrial disaster".

1986: At this time Alon Reininger of Contact Press fought to ensure that Aids remained in the news. His photo of Ken Meeks, whose skin is marked with lesions caused by Aids-related Kaposi's Sarcoma, helped him achieve this.

1992: In Somalia, a mother lifts the body of her child - a famine victim - and carries it to its grave. This was the first of two awards in three years for James Nachtwey, who at the time was with Magnum Photos. Subsequently he formed a new photo agency, VII.

1996: Francesco Zizola photographed landmine victims in Kuito, Angola. He says, "the civil war left scars on the local population, the least of which were the physical ones". Despite this, Zizola was struck by the children's desire to return to life and to play.

2004: Arko Datta of Reuters portrays a woman mourning the death of a relative after the tsunami in India. His decision to include just the hand ensured the horror of the story could be told, but was not as distracting as showing the entire bloated body.