Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs from The New York Times
View the photographs from The New York Times as a slideshow. Read "Photography Pulitzer for Coverage of a Refugee Crisis" from The New York Times (April 18, 2016).
Photography
Pulitzer for
Coverage of Refugee Crisis
By David Gonzalez and James Estrin Apr. 18, 2016
The New York Times and Thomson Reuters shared the Pulitzer Prize
for breaking news photography for coverage of Europe’s refugee crisis. The
Times’s team was comprised of Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and
Daniel Etter. This is the newspaper’s fourth photo Pulitzer in the past three
years.
The prize for feature photography was awarded to Jessica
Rinaldi of the Boston Globe “for the raw and revealing photographic
story of a boy who strives to find his footing after abuse by those he
trusted.”
At the heart of the Times’s entry were Mr. Ponomarev’s and Mr. Lima’s
photographs of a Syrian refugee family’s trek from Greece to Sweden, where they
applied for asylum. Mr. Ponomarev photographed the first part of the Majid
family’s journey through Macedonia to Serbia, while Mr. Lima followed them from
Belgrade, Serbia, to Trelleborg, Sweden. In total, the photographers accompanied them for 40 days
by train, bus and boat, but most often on foot.
SHOWCASE
The Pulitzer Prize
A look back on prize winning Pulitzer coverage on Lens.
Michele McNally, an assistant managing editor and director of
photography at the Times, said the award was a reaffirmation of the newspaper’s
commitment to photography, especially on complicated and quick-moving global
stories. “I’ve been a photo editor for a long time, and this story is important
to me because it affects the entire world: America, Europe and the Middle
East,” she said. “It affects everyone, including you and me.”
Photography Pulitzer: Thomson Reuters Coverage of Migrant Crisis
Credit
Yannis Behrakis/Reuters
David Furst, the Times’s international picture editor, assigned the
photographers and shepherded the newspaper’s visual coverage. “What makes this
entry so important is it really gives the full arc of mass migration and also
shows the individual suffering,” he said. “These photographers deserve a
tremendous amount of credit. They are talented photographers invested for
significant periods of time making images that matter. We’re really proud of
them.”
Ms. McNally added that the team Mr. Furst assembled was uniquely
suited to cover a crisis that had dominated the news and attracted thousands of
reporters. “There are so many interpretations of the refugee crisis,” she said.
“The different backgrounds of the photographers, I think, contributed to the
success of the coverage. We have a Russian, a Brazilian, an American and a
German.”
Mr. Ponomarev, who is based in Moscow, spent five months on the
migration story. He said the flood of humanity looked like a Biblical exodus.
The effects of this migration, he said, will be felt for decades.
“The travel part is just the beginning,” he said. “I want to follow
this to the end. I want to cover what comes next, the political and social
changes that this exodus will cause.”
Mr. Lima had already started on that aspect: He was in the Swedish
countryside with the Majid family, playing with the children — who have come to
call him “Uncle” — when he got word of the prize. He broke down in tears, as he
thought about the ordeal the Majids had endured.
“Theirs is probably the greatest experience of perseverance and
commitment I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Lima, who is from Brazil, said. “They did the
journey on their own from Syria to Sweden, crossing eight or nine borders at a
time when there was no volunteer help for them. Jamila was pregnant but she
never complained, and the children were very strong. Their spirit and their
hospitality to have us among them really impressed me.”
Although Mr. Etter spent only two days on assignment, his image of a tearful man cradling a child as their
packed rubber boat arrived in Greece was indelible. The photo soon went viral
on social media.
“It was quite overwhelming to see their joy and the release of the
fear they had been feeling,” Mr. Etter, who was born in Germany and lives in
Barcelona, said. “You take so many photos and most pretty much go unnoticed,”
he said. “The reaction this photo triggered was overwhelming.”
Mr. Hicks, a staff photographer for The Times, spent several weeks
covering the refugees as they arrived in Lesbos. His long experience covering
the conflicts in the countries that the refugees were fleeing gave him a keen
appreciation of the desperation that fueled their journey, as well as the joy
they felt to find safe haven.
“It says something about the fear and control they live under in those
countries,” Mr. Hicks said. “It was emotional for me to see those people come,
and to be able to identify with some of the trauma they lived.”
This is Mr. Hicks’s third Pulitzer: He won in 2014 for his photos of
the terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. Previously, he was
among the New York Times staff members who shared the 2009 prize for
International Reporting for coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Tyler can shoot the most aesthetic, memorable and meaningful pictures
in any situation,” Ms. McNally said. “Even under fire.”
Thomson Reuters chief photographer for Greece and Cyprus, Yannis
Behrakis, led their coverage and contributed eight of the 17 photographs in the
winning entry.
“We showed the world what was going on, and the world cared. It showed
that humanity is still alive,” Behrakis said. “We made for these unfortunate
people’s voice to be heard. Now with a Pulitzer, we feel that our work has been
professionally recognized.”
Ms. Rinaldi’s story “The Life and Times of Strider Wolf,” was
about a child whose life was marked by abuse and hardship, from beatings to
eviction. In the paper’s submission letter for the prize, the Globe’s editor
said “Strider had a simple and abiding wish: to be loved.” Ms. Rinaldi and
reporter Sarah Schweitzer repeatedly visited the child and his relatives in
Maine, spending days form dawn to dusk with them, gaining their trust. The
story — with its hope to see if this child would break free of misfortune —
struck a powerful chord with readers and led to donations and a trust fund for
the family.
Pulitzer for Feature Photography, Jessica Rinaldi
Credit
Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe, via Associated Press
“This story is about more than one family,” the Globe wrote in its
letter. “It is a devastating and uniquely revealing portrait of poverty and the
power of trauma to transcend generations. It is also, ultimately, a beautiful,
complex and painful story about the yearnings of the human spirit.” Ms. Rinaldi
was also a finalist this year in the feature photography category for images of
a heroin addict’s struggles in East Boston.
Ms. Rinaldi learned of her Pulitzer while driving a rental car in
Atlanta after covering a practice of The Boston Celtics before tomorrow’s
playoff game. She almost drove off the road when Bill Greene, the Globe’s
director of photography, called with the news, she said. It was, to her, a
validation of months of effort on a challenging story.
“I learned that if you tell a story with a lot of heart and subtlety
in a way that can really grab people, that people will respond,” Ms. Rinaldi
36, said.
“Sometimes we can get discouraged about what the outcome of our work
can be, but this proves that photography can make a difference.”
Refugee Crisis: Poetry, Photography, and Society 2015-2016 |
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