The World Press Photo of the Year for 2007 — now on display at Brookfield Place’s Allen Lambert Galleria with other prizewinners in various categories — is a pretty humble victor. The image, taken by the UK’s Tim Hetherington for Vanity Fair, is mottled, blurry. Its subject, appropriately perhaps, is the war in Afghanistan: an American soldier in action at Korengal Valley, one of the country’s most perilous regions. The guy looks terrified; he is in a pit of death, “Restrepo Bunker,” named after a soldier recently killed by insurgents. Hetherington’s unsteady hand brutally mirrors the fear, exhaustion and bewilderment evident in his subject’s face.

Other World Press photographs show more artistry and sheen, according to the category into which they fall. Note the sports photographs, some of which are cliché, but which also demonstrate how well-suited the medium and activity are to each other. Chris Detrick’s remarkable photo, taken for The Salt Lake Tribune, catches college basketball at its nastiest, with Pepperdine’s Jason Walberg looking as if he’s gouging out the eyes of Brigham Young’s Jonathan Tavernari. (Coincidentally, a foul was not called, and Tavernari went on, eyes intact, to lead his team to victory by scoring a string of three-pointers.) The Contemporary Issues, Portraits, and Arts and Entertainment categories all have commendable work, but also evince heavy hands. (It would be foolish to come to a show like this, full of photographic technicians of the highest order, and expect authentic, unaltered glimpses of reality.) One-name photographer Platon, who won First Prize in Portraits, also gets the prize for smugness; his shot of Vladimir Putin adopts a crisp, Ingres-like aesthetic in an attempt to reveal the leader’s fractured public mask, but ends up testifying to of one of photography’s most under-discussed capacities: to mock and obfuscate, rather than to reveal and criticize.

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