Three AP photojournalists from JK win Pulitzer Prize in feature photography
Srinagar, May 5: Three Photojournalists of the Associated Press news agency Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand found have won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography.
The prize winners were announced virtually on Monday owing to the coronavirus outbreak.
Pulitzer board administrator Dana Canedy declared the winners from her living room via a livestream on YouTube rather than at a ceremony at New York’s Columbia University.
In a statement on their website following the announcement, Pulitzer said the Kashmiri photographers were selected for their “striking images of life” in the ‘disputed Himalayan territory’.
The Pulitzers are generally regarded as the highest honour that United States-based journalists and organisations can receive.
Snaking around roadblocks, sometimes taking cover in strangers’ homes and hiding cameras in vegetable bags, the three photographers captured images of protests, police and paramilitary action and daily life.
They then headed to the local airport to persuade travellers to carry the photo files out with them and get them to the AP’s office in, New Delhi.
“It was always cat-and-mouse,” Yasin recalled on Monday in an email. “These things made us more determined than ever to never be silenced.”
Yasin and Khan are based in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, while Anand is based in the Jammu district.
Anand said the award left him speechless. “I was shocked and could not believe it,” he said.
The AP’s president and CEO Gary Pruitt said their work was “important and superb”.
