The Overseas Press Club of America announces its four photography awards : Tyler Hicks wins The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award (Best published photographic) reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise with “Attack on a Kenyan Mall” series, Robert Nickelsberg win The Olivier Rebbot Award (Best photographic reporting from abroad in magazines or books) with Afghanistan – A Distant War, Jerome Delay wins The John Faber Award (Best photographic reporting from abroad in newspapers or news services) with Central African Republic Unrest and Marcus Bleasdale win Feature Photographie Awards with The Last of the Viking Whalers (Best feature photography published in any medium on an international theme) for National Geographic.
Tyler Hicks, a staff photographer for The New York Times, had just returned from his own wedding in the States and was picking up some gifts around the corner from the Westgate Shopping Mall when he heard that something was happening. He ran over and saw people streaming from the entrance, and bodies. Using the small camera he always carries, he began shooting until his new wife could arrive with his Kevlar helmet and professional cameras. Tyler Hicks has been among the most dedicated combat photographers in the world this past decade. He photographed the battlefields of Afghanistan and the war in Sudan. He was kidnapped in Libya; he was bombed in Gaza. He photographed the fighting in Syria.
French photographer Jerome Delay is chief Africa photographer for the Associated Press. For the last few years, he spent much time in Mali and the Central African Republic, and won the OPC’s John Faber award for covering the unrest in the Central African Republic. The OPC judges said: “The highest standards of news photography are displayed in the winner’s work. The images powerfully convey the situation with unflinching directness from this underreported and continuing African conflict.”
Robert Nickelsberg is a Brooklyn, NY based photographer who traveled to Afghanistan numerous times over the last several years. His book, Afghanistan – A Distant War, brings to the readers and viewers attention the essential visual and historical events and personalities in Afghanistan that determined the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, militancy and terrorism following the Soviet Army’s withdrawal in May 1988 to the present. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought forward the post-cold war era of turmoil in the in the developing world. It documents and narrates events giving a visual perspective to the post-2014 political and strategic environment once the U.S. and NATO troops end their withdrawal.
Marcus Bleasdale – The Oslo-based TK photographer based spent over two years in Norway’s whaling communities and slowly convinced them to let him be the first photographer to take pictures of their world for over 30 years. The judges called his work “completely original photographic storytelling executed perfectly.”
Over thousands of years, Norwegians have hunted whales to eat. As cultural and environmental challenges weigh upon the
industry, fewer people take up this profession. With more opportunities to study and travel, young people in the whaling
communities have chosen increasingly to leave and the communities are dying. The whalers, who once numbered in the thousands, now man just 17 boats. Faced with international opposition to whaling, there has been a reluctance to allow photographers into their community to document their lifestyle. But for over two years, Bleasdale lived in these communities and convinced them to let him be the first photographer in 30 years to document their world. With this way of life fast disappearing, this was one of the last opportunities to see how whalers must overcome the elements to provide for their communities.
Marcus Bleasdale has captured a dying way of life in Norway as the whaling profession shrinks under an international quota of 1,286 whales per year. The communities in Norway that rely on whaling rarely capture more than 500 whales because the demand for whale meat has diminished as well.
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