2019 Pulitzer Prizes for photography awarded to images of migrants and famine

The prestigious Pulitzer Prize has its 2019 winners, and while it celebrates the best in literature, music composition and journalism, there are two categories for photography as well.

The prize for the Breaking News Photography category went to the photojournalists from Reuters for their images of the migrant caravan heading towards the US border. The photographs are “a vivid and startling visual narrative of the urgency, desperation and sadness of migrants as they journeyed” north through Central and South America.

The Feature Photography prize was awarded to Lorenzo Tugnoli for his contributions to The Washington Post. His photographs of the devastating effects of the famine were initially entered into the Breaking News Photography category, but the jury moved them to the Feature Photography instead.

He won the prize for the “brilliant photo storytelling of the tragic famine in Yemen, shown through images in which beauty and composure are intertwined with devastation”.

Congratulating his photography team, Reuters’ editor-in-chief Stephen J Adler rightly said, “While it’s gratifying to be recognized for the work, public attention should be focused more on the people about whom we report than on us: in this case, the Rohingya and the Central American migrants.”

We have displayed only a few images from each category here, but you can view all the winning images, along with the descriptions, at the Pulitzer Prize website.

Please do keep in mind that some of the images are graphic and heart-wrenching.