A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award Thursday.
The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times.
“It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory. It inspires a kind of sensory reaction,” Global jury chair Rena Effendi said in a statement. “I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world.”
It was not the first recognition for Bracken’s work in the Amsterdam-based competition. She won first prize in the contest’s Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
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