World Press Photo competition celebrates a powerful and ever-changing medium

A picture, these days, says a thousand words — and travels a thousand miles in an instant.

Social media have transformed the field of photojournalism, where anyone with a smartphone can share images from one corner of the world to another. The World Press Photo competition, which turns 60 this year, helps viewers navigate the ever-expanding world of visual journalism.

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Started in 1955 by Dutch photojournalists, the Amsterdam-based contest receives more than 95,000 submissions from 131 countries. The exhibition of 145 winning images — all unmanipulated exposures in categories such as “people,” “nature” and “contemporary issues” — is on a 45-country tour and arrives at the Rotunda in Beverly Hills on Thursday.

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Raphaela Rosella of Australia won the Portraits Category with her shot of Laurinda waiting in her purple dress for the bus that will take her to Sunday school.

  (2015 World Press Photo Contest / Raphaela Rosella)

Danish photographer Mads Nissen’s low-lighted, golden-hued image “Jon and Alex” won 2015 World Press Photo of the Year. It captures a gay couple in St. Petersburg, Russia, gazing at each other, lovingly, in bed.

A series of pictures by American photographer Glenna Gordon depicts the abandoned, stained uniforms of Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by the militant group Boko Haram. Other photographs in the exhibition, for which The Times is a media sponsor: A masked, Chinese factory worker toils over Christmas decorations to be exported; an Eritrean couple is married in Haifa, Israel; the Italian government rescues Syrian refugees off the coast of Libya. Collectively, the images in the exhibition are a celebration of contemporary photo journalism as well as an exploration of how the art form has evolved and why it’s so relevant.

“Photojournalism used to be very much about documenting — that you were there and showing things to an audience who didn’t have access,” says Paul Ruseler, the exhibition’s senior project manager. “This is still the role. But there’s a lot more access nowadays. If something happens, we see pictures people took with their cellphones. The role of photography, now, is much more to contextualize and to reflect on what’s happening instead of just documenting it.”

Ruseler says Nissen’s winning image is a perfect example of this.

“There’s a big hatred of homosexuality in Russia. And what his photograph is displaying, is what that hatred is aimed at,” Ruseler says.

“Instead of showing a man being beaten down, he’s showing the source of the violence, which is love,” Ruseler adds. “It kind of turns around the idea of photojournalism being a display of violence and creates a more subtle language to talk about it.”

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World Press Photo Exhibition

Where: The Rotunda, 100 N. Crescent Drive, Beverly Hills

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday to Jan. 3 (closed on Christmas)

Admission: Free

Info: (310) 402-6518, www.worldpressphoto.org/exhibitions