Seleziona la prima riga per ogni gruppo in MySQL?

Puoi GROUP BY e scegliere la posizione MAX.

SELECT ri.*
FROM (
    SELECT ri.release_id, MAX(ri.position) AS position
    FROM release_image ri
    GROUP BY ri.release_id
) ri_max
INNER JOIN release_image ri ON ri_max.release_id = ri.release_id
    AND ri_max.position = ri.position