The mayor of Charleroi has called on World Press Photo to withdraw a prestigious prize it awarded to an Italian photographer who portrayed the gritty Belgian town as riven by sexual perversion, racism, drug abuse and "neurotic obesity."

Mayor Paul Magnette said the series of photos by Giovanni Troilo under the title Dark Heart of Europe were "a serious distortion of reality that undermines the city and its inhabitants, as well as the profession of photojournalist." "Charleroi is not, on any account, the dark heart of Europe," he wrote in a letter to World Press Photo, which in early February gave Mr Troilo the prize in its contemporary issues category.

"You will not find one single inhabitant who will recognise his city in these pictures, not to mention the captions that look more like a settling of scores than a reportage," Mr Magnette said.

Mr Troilo, whose family emigrated to work in the steel industry in Charleroi in the 1950s, has since admitted that some of his photos were staged in order to show scenes which he claims typify the town and symbolise Europe-wide issues.

But he insisted that this does not affect the journalistic integrity of his work.

On his website he writes that one of the photos in the series, of people having sex in a car, was staged by the photographer and that the man involved was his cousin.

The series offers a grim picture of the town which is situated about 40 miles south of Brussels and is today best known for its airport which many low-cost carriers use as a regional base.

Mr Troilo writes on his website that it "has experienced the collapse of industrial manufacturing, rising unemployment, increasing immigration and outbreak of micro-criminality."

"A perverse and sick sex, race hate, neurotic obesity and the abuse of psychiatric drugs seem to be the only cures being able to make this endemic uneasiness acceptable," he said.

World Press Photo said in a statement that it had taken note of the complaint by the mayor of Charleroi and was "currently investigating the photo story, as it does with all prize-winning pictures, and is in touch with the necessary parties."

Last week, organisers of the photo awards said almost a quarter of the pictures reaching the penultimate round of the contest had been rejected because they had been digitally enhanced.

In November, World Press Photo released a report on standards and current practices concerning manipulation of still images in photojournalism.

At the awards ceremony on February 12, managing director Lars Boering said "our rules clearly state that the content of the image should not be altered."