Under-18s have been banned from visiting this year’s World Press Photo exhibition in Budapest after Hungary’s right-wing populist government said some of the images violate a contentious law restricting LGBTQ+ content.
The global exhibition, on display in Hungary’s National Museum, gets more than four million visitors from around the world every year.
Showcasing photojournalism, its mission is to bring visual coverage of a range of important events to a wide audience.
But a set of five photographs by Filipino photojournalist Hannah Reyes Morales led a far-right Hungarian politician to file a complaint with the country’s cultural ministry, which found they violate a Hungarian law that bans the display of LGBTQ+ content to children.
Now, even with parental consent, those under 18 are no longer allowed to visit the exhibition.
The photographs, which document a community of elderly LGBTQ+ people in the Philippines who have shared a home for decades and cared for each other as they age, depict some community members dressed in drag and wearing make up.
Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo, called it worrisome that a photo series “that is so positive, so inclusive” has been targeted by Hungary’s government.
It is the first time one of the exhibitions has faced censorship in Europe, she said.
“The fact that there is limited access for a certain type of audience is really something that shocked us terribly,” Ms Khoury said.
“It’s mind-boggling that it’s this specific image, this specific story, and it’s mind-boggling that it’s happening in Europe.”
The move to ban young people from the exhibition is the latest by Hungary’s government, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, to restrict the availability of materials that promote — or depict — homosexuality to children in media, including television, films, advertisements and literature.
While the government insists the 2021 “child protection” law is designed to insulate children from what it calls sexual propaganda, it has prompted legal action from 15 countries in the European Union, with the bloc’s Commission president Ursula von der Leyen calling it “a disgrace”.
Dora Duro, the far-right politician who filed the complaint, said she was outraged when she visited the exhibition and rejected claims the government’s decision limits freedom of the press or free expression.
“How the LGBTQ minority lives is not the biggest problem in the world,” Ms Duro said.
“What we see as normal, what we depict and what we convey to (children) as valuable influences them, and this exhibition is clearly harmful to minors and, I think, to adults too.”
Ms Reyes Morales said the subjects in her photographs serve as “icons and role models” to the LGBTQ+ community in the Philippines and they are “not dangerous or harmful”.
“What is harmful is limiting visibility for the LGBTQIA+ community, and their right to exist and to be seen,” she said.
“I am beyond saddened that their story might not reach people who need it most, saddened that their story is being kept in a shadow.”
Tamas Revesz, a former World Press Photo jury member who has been the organiser of Hungary’s exhibitions for more than three decades, said many of the photographs in the exhibition — such as coverage of the war in Ukraine — are “a thousand times more serious and shocking” than Ms Reyes Morales’ series.
But given that around half of the some 50,000 people who visit the exhibition in Hungary each year are students, he said, thousands of Hungarian youth will now be unable to view the World Press Photo collection — even the images free of LGBTQ+ content.
“The goal of each image and each image report is to bring the news to us, the viewer, and a lot of reporters risk their lives for us to have that knowledge,” Mr Revesz said.
“Everyone is free to think what they want about the images on display. These pictures were taken without prejudice, and we too should take what we see here without prejudice.”
