Last week, the World Press Photo jury announced their choices for the best press photos published in 2010. Lens Culture is pleased to present a selection of the winners again this year. A record number of 108,059 images was submitted to the contest, and the number of participating photographers was 5,847, representing 125 different nationalities.

At first glance, almost all of the winning images portray doom and gloom — and lots of it. The year 2010, as depicted by the award winners, was filled with tragedy, horror, natural disaster, inhumanity, outrage and despair. The overall winner is an unforgettable image (below) by Jodi Beiber, of a young Afghan woman mutilated on the orders of the Taliban.

These difficult and disturbing images are softened (slightly) by some dream-like photos of wild animals in nature, split-second moments of seemingly impossible physical feats in the Sports category, and an ironic look at daily life captured through the random lens of Google Street View and edited with a curator's critical eye by photographer Michael Wolf.

See this article at Lens Culture for more information and a high-resolution slideshow of the winning images.