Veteran photographer Vadim Ghirda has won an award for his report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Conflict
Mr. Ghirda won the Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents People’s Photo for images he took for the Associated Press during the conflict which began on Feb. 24, organizers announced Saturday.
“I am very pleased and proud to win a Bayeux award, especially in the Public’s Choice category which mixes the votes of the jury with viewers’ votes,” Mr. Ghirda told Universul.net on Sunday. “The public’s reaction to my work gives me a sense of mission and keeps me going. “
“Ultimately, the public has the power, once informed, to change the path of history for the better,” he said.
Ukraine
“My heart goes out to every single person that helped me work in Ukraine: to those who allowed me to take photographs while they were going through unimaginably tough moments and to all my colleagues.”
The seasoned 51-year-old photographer who covered the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the war in Iraq, conflicts in the Middle East and reported from Ukraine after Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 while working for the AP, reflected on the latest violence.
Horrors
“After every conflict I covered over the past 30 years, I hoped that another one would not be possible, since people saw the horrors that millions of innocent people went through,” he said. “
„On the morning of Feb. 24, as the sound of explosions was heard outside Sieverodonetsk, I was still clinging to that dream,” he added.
Solidarity
He said he hoped the award, his latest of many, was a way to “explore solidarity among humans, rather than conflict and death.”
Another AP photographer, Evgeniy Maloletka won first prize in the same competition for his report on the bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol.
The Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents 29th edition largely rewarded coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and also highlighted the situation in Afghanistan and Africa.
Photos offer rare glimpse of wounded Ukrainian soldiers in besieged Mariupol steel plant
