Should we save the world or cultivate our own garden?

I visited the World Press Photo 2025 exhibition in Buenos Aires four times.

The first time I went alone. I left feeling very depressed. I couldn’t even make it through the entire exposition. The journalistic photographs were all about human suffering.

The second time I randomly met two friends there. They said: “It’s rather gloomy. There’s not enough hope.”

The third time I ended up there with my younger daughter.

Actually, we had gone to watch dancers rehearsing their dances at the Recoleta Cultural Centre, and the exhibition just happened to be on the same floor.

From the entire exhibition, I showed my daughter only two photographs. These ones that I’m showing here. There is hope in them.

The fourth time I visited the website with the digital version of the exhibition to listen to the photographers’ voices and what they themselves say about their works.

Here’s what photographer Santiago Mesa from Colombia says:

I know photography cannot solve a problem like this, but may be can contribute to making the issue public. Santiago Mesa

People have all sorts of different problems, but the main themes at World Press Photo 2025 were:
— war;
— climate change;
— migration.

In Luc Besson’s “The Fifth Element” there’s a scene where the alien Leeloo, played by Milla Jovovich, starts crying after becoming acquainted with human history. Well, who wouldn’t cry?

If you judge humanity by the photographs at this exhibition, it becomes very sad. I don’t even know myself why I went to this exhibition so many times.

Probably for me this exhibition became something like the journey of Voltaire’s Candide, who, having seen enough of a world full of injustice and absurd evil, comes to the conclusion that “we must cultivate our garden.”

What do you think: should we save the world or cultivate our own garden?