Photographs of Syria Sweep Pulitzer Prizes
April 15, 2013, 6:42 pm
Rodrigo Abd, Manu Brabo, Narciso Contreras, Khalil Hamra and Muhammed Muheisen of The Associated Press have won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for their coverage of Syria’s civil war. Javier Manzano, a freelance photographer working with Agence France-Presse, has won the Pulitzer in feature photography for his picture of two Syrian rebel fighters taking aim through a pockmarked wall in Aleppo.
The announcement was made on Monday afternoon by Columbia University, which bestows the awards. Santiago Lyon, director of photography at A.P., said he was impressed with the breadth of work from the five A.P. photographers. Beyond just taking photographs of fighting, he said, they managed to capture the effects of the conflict on Syria’s civilian population and the extent of the country’s refugee crisis.
“It’s tremendous recognition for a group of five of the most talented and brave photographers working in the world today for their work covering the awful war in Syria,” Mr. Lyon said. “It’s very fitting given their dedication and commitment in the face of terrible work conditions over the course of the last year.”
Mr. Muheisen, 32, who won his first Pulitzer in 2005 for coverage of the war in Iraq, spent the better part of two months photographing displaced Syrian civilians. “On a personal level, I found that this was a very important part of the story,” he said in a phone interview from Islamabad, Pakistan. “All the photographers went to the front lines to photograph the rebels and the fighting, and there wasn’t much attention paid to those people who were living in the streets. It’s so important to me that the images of internally displaced Syrians are part of the Pulitzer Prize package. It means that history won’t forget them.”
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/photographs-of-syria-sweep-pulitzer-prizes/
21 photos in slideshow at link.
