Zoom in, zoom out: Deeply personal and political pictures dominate Hungarian press photo exhibition

A mood for a change of government, parents raising children with serious illnesses, and ballet dancers, these were among the subjects that most captured the attention of Hungarian photojournalists in 2025. The 44th Hungarian Press Photo Exhibition opened on Wednesday in Budapest. More than 6,200 entries were submitted by the 258 photographers to the competition. The exhibition features not only the first three prize-winning works in each of the 16 categories and the special award winners, but also photographs that the jury considered particularly important or compelling. Today, when the greatest value and belief is that a picture is real, then we have to be very careful about this. This year's Moore's Grand Prize went to freelance photographer Diana Németh for her series Nimrod, while the André Kertész Grand Prize was awarded to Noémi Napsuga-Meleg, a photographer with the Hungarian news website Telex. Noémi's most prestigious award came from documenting a personal tragedy. Following the death of her 18-year-old younger brother, she spent years photographing her grieving family and his former classmates. On the other hand, I made a lot of them for the boys, so I didn't show them to anyone. After a year and a half, I started to show them to my best friends, and that somehow somehow helped me to do something. The exhibition can be visited at the Capa Center until November the 8th. This year, unusually, a traveling version of the exhibition is also touring Hungary.