THIS HEARTBREAKING PHOTOGRAPH WON WORLD PRESS PHOTO AWARD: SEE INSIDE

Winning an award for a photograph that brings a smile on your face is much appreciated but winning it for something so painful can only be haunting. Recently, a photograph that won the prestigious World Press Photo Award was of a little girl crying helplessly when she and her mother were taken into custody by US border officials. This heart breaking photo of the crying toddler was published worldwide with both positive and negatives opinions to it. This image also caused a huge public outcry about Washington's controversial policy to separate thousands of migrants from their children. 

According to AFP reports, the judges on explaining about the photo said that veteran Getty photographer John Moore's picture was clicked after Honduran mother Sandra Sanchez and her daughter Yanela who had illegally crossed the US-Mexico border last year showed "a different kind of violence that is psychological."

Further giving clarifications on the picture, US Customs and Border Protection officials stated that Yanela and her mom were not among those separated, but the public anger "resulted in President Donald Trump reversing the policy in June last year." Meanwhile, Moore who was taking pictures of US Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley on June 12 last year came across a group of people who tried to cross the border. "I could see the fear on their faces, in their eyes," Moore told the US-based National Public Radio broadcaster in an interview shortly afterwards.

On explaining about the scene, Moore said that as officials took their names, Sandra Sanchez and her toddler started wailing. The sensitive issue of immigration was further highlighted at Thursday's awards. Judges chose Dutch-Swedish photographer Pieter Ten Hoopen's images of the 2018 mass-migrant caravan to the US border as its winner in the "World Press Photo Story of the Year Award."

According to the Amsterdam-based organisers, the judges selected this year's winners from 78,801 images entered by 4,738 photographers world-wide. Three lensmen from AFP, John Wessels, Brendan Smialowski and Pedro Pardo were handed one second place and three third places overall in the various categories.