Jonathan Fointaine’s “The Nomad’s Final Journey”, which was awarded with an honorable mention by the World Press Photo jury, is on display at the opening of the World Press Photo 2023 exhibition at the Hungarian National Museum, in Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. Minors under 18 have been barred from visiting this year’s World Press Photo exhibition in Hungary after the government determined that some of its photos violate a contentious law restricting LGBTQ+ content.
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. The move to bar young people from the exhibition was the latest by Hungary’s government, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, tois 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.”
Reyes Morales, the photographer, said in an emailed statement that the subjects in her photographs serve as “icons and role models” to the LGBTQ+ community in the Philippines, and that they are “not dangerous or harmful.”