by MATTHEW WOODLEY

In what must be an insanely trippy assembly of human beings, every year the town of Twinsburg, Ohio, plays host to the biggest gathering of twins in the world. It's a double serving of parades, contests, talent shows and special deals at the Holiday Inn for lookalikes. Though she's not a twin herself, Mary Ellen Mark made the pilgrimage in 2002. The photographer is renowned for her social documentary style, capturing quirky images of Americana through its diverse lifestyles: Miami gigolos, Coney Island regulars, spring-break revellers, prom-goers and womb-sharers. Her Twins series is now a book, a movie and a travelling exhibition. This year it also won her first prize in the Arts and Entertainment Stories category in the World Press Photo Contest, which stops into Montreal this month in the midst of an 80-city tour.

Mark is in some pretty amazing company. The World Press Photo exhibition brings together more than 200 images chosen from a pool of 63,000, submitted by 4,176 photographers from 124 countries. Divided into 10 categories that encompass news, sports, nature and daily life, the show's overriding emphasis is on current world events - way more sobering than a town-full of twins.

Take this year's grand-prize winner. In a U.S. holding centre for prisoners of war in Najaf, Iraq, an Iraqi man comforts his four-year-old son. Seen through coils of barbed wire, the man's head is covered by a hood commonly used by American solidiers, quicker than a blindfold and good for disorienting prisoners. His son had become terrified at the sight of his father being cuffed and covered. Later on, in a not-so-common moment of wartime humanity, a soldier cut the plastic handcuffs and let the man hold his boy. The image was captured by French photographer Jean-Marc Bouju, embedded with the 101st Airborne Division and father to a four-year-old of his own.

Bouju's photo, as dismal a situation as it depicts, has an undercurrent of hope you won't find in many of the others. Much of the imagery plays out like a shock-and-awe tour through world-suffering hotspots of the year gone by. An Afghani woman who set herself on fire, terrified of her husband's reaction to her short-circuiting the TV. A hyper-obese American 14-year-old boy hooked up to a machine that forces air into his lungs, struggling from excess fat blocking his throat. A mass burial in Liberia. Bullet-pierced bodies on a street in the Gaza Strip. All are beautifully composed and utterly overwhelming, if not a bit numbing at times.

That's where the twins come in. And the way-cool photos of European subway stations, the Danish rockabilly waiting in a laundromat, Russian volcanoes and geysers, a guy caught in a pile of rugby players whose face looks like it's going to burst; as in shot after shot, the craziness of the world scrum stopped for a split second.

The World Press Photo Exhibition, hosted by Contact Image, is at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac (2550 Ontario E.)
from Sept. 10-Oct. 3