Fabio Bucciarelli has won a €7000 cash prize at the 20th Bayeux Calvados Awards for an image shot in Syria of “a wounded young Syrian who sits at the back of a truck after an attack carried out by President Assad’s forces on a Shaar neighbourhood”.
Bucciarelli, who works for Agence France-Presse, came ahead of Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic and CNN’s Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, both of whom were also commended for their work in Syria.
[bjp_ad_slot]The Public Photo Prize was awarded to another Agence France-Presse stringer, Javier Manzano, who will receive €3000 for an image also shot in Aleppo, Syria. Manzano won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year for the same work. He spoke to BJP at the time about the danger of covering the Syrian conflict as an independent photographer.
“Security is an issue we all take seriously,” Manzano told BJP. “The difference is that if an independent journalist gets kidnapped or killed, he or she will most likely be labelled as ‘an irresponsible daredevil’. If a staffer from a large organisation is kidnapped, he or she will most likely get television interviews and praise for ‘risking it all’ to get the story. We as freelance journalists obsess about security and safety every day, all day long. We stay inside Syria longer and because of this we have a fairly good grasp of the conditions on the ground. I believe the level and calibre of work being produced by freelancers inside Syria is highly commendable. At the end of the day, we are here because we just want to work.”
The 20th Bayeux Calvados Awards were marked by the confirmation that two French journalists, including photographer Pierre Torrès, have been missing since June this year, in addition to Edouard Elias and Didier François. Torrès, with his colleague and writer Nicolas Hénin, were abducted on 22 June.
“Today, journalists are targets in this war,” Jean-Philippe Rémy, Le Monde‘s bureau chief in Africa, commented on Friday evening at the Bayeux Calvados Awards. “The hunting season is open.” Rémy collaborated with photographer Laurent Van Der Stockt earlier this year to bring back proof of use of chemical weapons in Syria. The special report received both the Written Press and Web Journalism awards in Bayeux.
For more information, visit www.prixbayeux.org.