2012 Photo Contest, Spot News, 2nd prize

Utøya

Photographer

Niclas Hammarström

for <em>Aftonbladet</em>

22 July, 2011

Suspecting that there is more than one killer involved, police search Utøya island, after apprehending one gunman.

About the photographer

Niclas Hammarström

Niclas Hammarström was born in Sweden in 1969. When he was 14, he started to take pictures at the Solvalla horserace track. He later studied photography in Stockholm. After his s...

Background story

Utøya, Norway

Suspecting that there is more than one killer involved, police search Utøya island, after apprehending one gunman. On 22 July, Anders Behring Breivik (32) killed 69 people on the small island of Utøya, 40 kilometers northwest of Oslo, in Norway. The shootings formed the second of two sequential attacks, the first being a car-bomb explosion in the government quarter of the capital, which killed eight people and injured 92. The Utøya incident took place less than two hours later. The island is the site of an annual summer camp organized by the youth division of the Norwegian Labor Party. Breivik gained access by posing as a police officer who had come to conduct a routine check following the Oslo bombing. He went on to shoot indiscriminately, killing and injuring people around the island and firing on those who jumped into the water in an attempt to escape.

Local police did not have a helicopter appropriate for transporting groups of officers, and could not find a suitable boat to reach the island. When anti-terror police arrived from Oslo, they were eventually carried over to Utøya on civilian craft, reaching the island an hour after the first shots had been fired. Breivik was arrested, and later put on terrorist charges for both attacks. Breivik, who admitted carrying out both the bombing and the shooting, had been preparing for the attacks for a number of years, and had distributed a manifesto outlining his extremist beliefs.

Technical information

Shutter Speed
1/125 sec
Focal length
200 mm
F-Stop
f/2.8
ISO
2000
Camera
Canon EOS 1D Mark III

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