An image of African migrants calling home wins an international photo award

In Djibouti, African migrants sometimes walk out to the beach, hold their phones in the air and hope to get a cell phone signal out of Somalia, of all places. American Photographer John Stanmeyer took a photo of that scene last year and on Friday it was chosen as the "World Press Photo of the Year."

Gary Knight, founder of the VII Photo Agency, chaired the award jury. He called the winning image a "hopeful" photo.

“I have no idea what the photographer meant to represent, I have no idea what these men were thinking at the top, but the way the jury responded to this photograph was that it was a moment of hope born from despair," Knight said.

Another jury member praised the picture for portraying the migrants as "dignified," instead of "bedraggled and pathetic". Stanmeyer took his prize-winning shot for National Geographic. Almost 100,000 images by more than 5500 photographers from 132 countries were entered in the contest.