World Press Photo Exhibition, Festival Hall - review

This annual exhibition by some of the world's most significant and influential photojournalists preserves events which often shock and horrify then vanish under the next crisis. The winning images combine sometimes dramatic portraits of people in the news, peak action in sport and moments of fatal drama with lyrical nature photographs.

Jodi Bieber's winning portrait of an Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off is iconic: a beautiful but horrifying studio portrait calculated to present dignity and strength. In contrast, the blue spotlight shone by Seamus Murphy onto Julian Assange's eye makes a deliciously satirical detective reference.
Violence is inevitably rife and this year's dominant trend moves from the implication used in Simon Norfolk's and the late Tim Hetherington's Afghan scenes, to the literal and explicit.

Colour is crucial: the Tibetan monks' cremation after the Chinese earthquake radiates the red robes against piles of naked bodies. Colour often serves as a distraction from horror; Andrew McConnell highlights the green fence surrounding a Congolese woman playing cello to symbolise hope among poverty, while Martin Roemers's Indian street is a familiar cacophony of colour.

Peak moments of drama in sport as well as news can lend amusement alongside horror: the matador being gored against the Bolivian women wrestlers in bowler hats. Wolfgang Hahn interestingly recreated the theatrical self-portraits taken by fellow Berliners for their Myspace sites, while Michael Wolf's Google Street Views adds a new medium for capturing dramatic, sometimes private, moments. The trend for presenting in series is perfected in a Rio shootout which unravels like a film storyboard. But stand-alone images, like those after the Haiti earthquake, often hold the greatest drama.

This annual event always leaves images embedded in the mind's eye and installs many new scenes of beauty as well as shock.

Until November 29 (southbankcentre.co.uk, 020 7960 4200)

World Press Photo Exhibition
Festival Hall
SE1