Telling a humbling story

The prestigious World Press Photo 2003 competition has been a celebration of photographic reporting since 1955, and this year it's attracted a record number of entries (53,597) from 118 countries worldwide.

With more than 200 of the prize-winning photographs exhibited here, from categories such as sports and news, it presents a stark contrast of impressive aesthetics and sobering reality. A compact visual record of personal, political, scientific and cultural events from 2002, unsurprisingly perhaps, it also induces a wide spectrum of emotional reactions.

Alexandra Boulat's portrait of Yves Saint Laurent taken in the days of his departure from high fashion, is a far cry from Brent Stirton's black and white portrait of a stoic 'bush wife'. The latter, at a glance a fashion shot, is beautiful and striking - belying both the subject's tender age (12), and the physical scars which remain as evidence of her abduction during the Sierra Leone conflict.

Concentrating on the technical aspects of the form seems callous when looking at Eric Grigorian's World Press Photo Of the Year - an image of a boy amidst the chaos of a post-earthquake mass burial, clutching the trousers of his dead father. Sarah Leen's image of a silicone mask (2nd Prize Science And Technology Singles), in contrast, purposefully perpetuates the search for beauty.

News, or perhaps the world, being what it is, there is plenty of food for thought on the desperate, the disparate and delicate nature of life that is presented here in an often compelling and irresistible form. A humbling experience, indeed.

Until June 1, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank SE1, daily 10am to 10pm, free. Tel: 020 7960 4242. www.rfh.org.uk Tube: Waterloo/Embankment