"No Woman's Land" Awarded by the World Press Photo 2025
17 February 2025
Iranian-Canadian photographer Kiana Hayeri, winner of the 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, has won the 2025 World Press Photo in the category Stories – West, Central and South Asia for her series No Woman’s Land. This major distinction recognizes a body of work of rare sensitivity, devoted to the daily lives of Afghan women under Taliban rule.
The World Press Photo jury highlighted the narrative and human strength of No Woman’s Land, describing the series as “a vital insight into the lives of women in Afghanistan.” According to the jury, the photographer succeeds in moving beyond familiar narratives and expected images of the conflict to document, with depth and compassion, the intimate realities of women rendered invisible in public space.
The jury’s motivations emphasize several key points:
- the intimacy and dignity that emerge from each portrait;
- the visual coherence of a series in which objects, colors, and spaces become markers of identity;
- the photographer’s ability to build trust, essential for allowing such access to private life in a context where any form of female expression is monitored, constrained, or prohibited.
Created in collaboration with women’s rights researcher Mélissa Cornet, the project is the result of several months of fieldwork across seven Afghan provinces and encounters with more than a hundred women and girls. In the face of restrictions imposed by the Taliban — the ban on education, the erasure of women from public life, the control of movement — No Woman’s Land reveals the discreet forms of resistance that endure.
Developed as part of the 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, this work now benefits from the global visibility offered by the World Press Photo’s international touring exhibitions and by its wide diffusion in the international press.
Développé dans le cadre du 14ᵉ Prix Carmignac du photojournalisme, ce travail bénéficie désormais de la visibilité mondiale offerte par les expositions itinérantes du World Press Photo et par sa diffusion dans la presse internationale.
