World Press Photo: This is how the earthquake photo was created that leaves no one unsettled

It is early in the morning, before the sun announces February 6, 2023, when Mesut Hançer stands in a bakery in Kahramanmaraş and the walls suddenly begin to stutter. There have been smaller earthquakes before, here in southeastern Turkey. But this time it’s different. Rumorier, stronger, 7.8 on the Richter scale. Hançer immediately rushes to his family to check that everything is going well. The house is damaged, but his wife and three adult children are fine. Only one is missing: 15-year-old Irmak. As an exception, she slept at Grandma’s that night, where her cousins ​​were staying.

In the Turkish capital Ankara, far from the epicenter of the quake, Adem Altan is woken up by the terrible news. The experienced photographer from the French news agency AFP packs the bare essentials, gets into the car and sets off for the disaster area. The streets are covered in snow and it is raining. It takes far more than the usual six and a half hours. He only arrives at night.

As daylight comes, the reporter walks through the destroyed streets of Kahramanmaraş. There is still no sign of rescue workers at many of the collapse sites. Altan pauses in front of what was once an eight-story apartment building. He sees panicked residents digging through the pile of rubble to save their relatives. Only one man sits frozen in the rubble, about 60 meters away, wrapped in an orange high-visibility jacket, his gaze apathetic. It’s Mesut Hancer. His left hand clasps his daughter’s fingers. Irmak was caught sleeping. She is still lying on a white mattress with the heavy concrete ceiling on top of her. “Take a photo of my child,” shouts Hançer. Altan has pressed the shutter button hundreds of thousands of times in his 42 years as a photographer.

But at this moment there are tears in his eyes for the first time. He takes a picture for eternity.

“This image became a symbol of a tragedy,” said the jury

If Altan chooses today star Remembering this scene, he says: “When I took the photo, I felt the father’s pain inside me.” With him, this pain was felt by people all over the world. The picture of Mesut Hançer was clicked millions of times on the Internet and printed on front pages around the world. The British “Daily Mail” wrote at the time about a “photo that broke the heart of the world.”

Now, a year later, it is nominated as the “World Press Photo of the Year”, the press photo of the year, which will be announced on April 18th – the Oscar for photojournalists. Altan has already won the prize for Europe’s Photo of the Year. “This image became a symbol of a tragedy,” the jury explained.

Little Irmak is just one of an estimated 55,000 people killed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. But the photo of the father holding her hand for over a day – knowing full well that there was no feeling in his fingers – illustrates all the helplessness, the suffering, the sadness that so many people felt there in those days.

After the earthquake, the authorities called off the search for missing people

As the star When people came to Kahramanmaraş shortly after the earthquake, many residents lit fire barrels when night fell. They stayed on the streets for days, waiting for their loved ones to be taken out of the rubble – dead or alive. The fire barrels became fewer and fewer. Two weeks after the disaster, the local authorities ordered to stop searching for missing people and only to clear away the rubble.

In the Kapıçam cemetery, above the city’s hills, there are still around 70 unidentified bones. Grave A-380 has a name: Irmak Leyla Hançer, born on October 18, 2007, underneath it says: “the daughter of Mesut”. Shortly after the quake, so many dead came to Kapıçam that simple wood stealing marked the graves. Today Irmak has a bed made of marble and flowers. She sleeps gently under the pine trees.

Her father Mesut lost his daughter, his mother, his brothers and a nephew in the earthquake. “But burying your child cannot be compared to that,” he said at the time. “It’s an indescribable pain.”

Today he lives with his family in Ankara. A philanthropic businessman who owns a television station has provided the family with an apartment and the former baker Hançer a job in the station’s canteen. People from all over the world who learned of his fate through the photo came forward. Photo reporter Adem Altan also stops by from time to time. In the living room there is a painted picture, given by an artist, of Mesut holding his daughter in his arms. She wears angel wings. In addition, the father has kept dozens of photos of his Irmak in a display case. The most painful part, the one in which he holds her hand for the last time, is not included.

You can find out more about the World Press Photo Contest 2024 here:

On April 18, the jury of the World Press Photo Award will choose the best photo of the year. The winners from the six world regions in the “Singles” category have already been chosen. The global jury will make a choice from this. See the impressive images and vote for which photo is your favorite.