In its eighth year, the IWMF’s Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award recognizes women photojournalists who exhibit extraordinary courage and humanity in reporting from areas of instability, oppression, and conflict. The award was created in honor of German Associated Press photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2014. This year’s winner is veteran freelance photographer Paula Bronstein; Afghan journalist Farzana Wahidy and U.S. journalist Carol Guzy are also honored.

Paula Bronstein | Farzana Wahidy | Carol Guzy

Paula Bronstein | United States

Paula Bronstein is one of the world’s leading female photojournalists with a career that spans over three decades. She uses her vision to document humanity, bringing awareness to issues throughout the world focusing in many conflict regions. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed book “Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear.”

Paula has worked as a staff photographer for a variety of American newspapers for 15 years, moving overseas to the Asian region in the late 90’s. She joined Getty Images as senior staff photographer from 2002-2013. Paula is currently freelance, her images have been published in almost every globally recognized publication and exhibited in numerous countries.

Image Captions

1. Opytne, Eastern Ukraine: Mariya Gorpynych, age 76, lives alone. She holds new chicks delivered by ICRC as part of a humanitarian aid service for elderly that live alone. It also allows them to raise chickens for some income. She speaks with tears in her eyes when talking about the death of her son. Victor,48 was killed due to the war in 2016, he was fatally injured by shelling that hit the home. He died in her hands. Her husband, died in the same year from a heart attack from extreme stress of living too close to the front line. Mariya refuses to leave her village because her family are buried there.”I have nowhere to flee, my whole family is buried here.” “I got used to the continued shelling.” Opytne is a war torn village on the contact line where only 43 people are left due to the dangers.
2. PALONG KHALI, BANGLADESH – OCTOBER 9: Thousands of exhausted Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar walk along a muddy rice field after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Well over 755,000 Rohingya refugees have fled into Bangladesh since late August during the outbreak of violence in Rakhine state causing a humanitarian crisis in the region with continued challenges for aid agencies.
3. KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -MARCH 29, 2016: A the Emergency hospital Najiba holds her nephew Shabir, age 2, who was injured from a bomb blast which killed his sister in Kabul on March 29, 2016. Najiba had to stay with the children as their mother buried her daughter. In 2016 marked another milestone in its 15-year engagement in Afghanistan. Despite billions of dollars spent by the international community to stabilize the country, Afghanistan has seen little improvement in terms of overall stability and human security. The situation on the ground for Afghans continues to be grave. Security for the Afghan people has also deteriorated in large swaths of the country, further complicating humanitarian response. Afghan civilians are at greater risk today than at any time since Taliban rule. According to UN statistics, in the first half of 2016 at least 1,600 people had died, and more than 3,500 people were injured, a 4 per cent increase in overall civilian causalities compared to the same period last year. The upsurge in violence has had devastating consequences for civilians, with suicide bombings and targeted attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents causing 70 percent of all civilian casualties.

Farzana Wahidy | Afghanistan

Farzana Wahidy is an award-winning Afghan documentary photographer best known for her photographs of women and girls in Afghanistan. She has been documenting the life of Afghan women for nearly two decades. Wahidy was the first female photographer in Afghanistan to work with international media agencies.

Wahidy’s work has been published widely in international magazines and newspapers and she has done assignments for numerous NGOs. In 2014, she created a project to train Afghan photographers, to review copyright law, and to research the history of photography in Afghanistan. In 2016 she established the Afghanistan Photographers Association.

Wahidy’s photographs have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Afghanistan, Canada, United States, India, Pakistan, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, China, Finland, and France. Wahidy is currently teaching photography at Bennington College in Vermont as visiting faculty member.

Image Captions

1. An Afghan young couple Shamim bride and her husband Mohammad during a photo shoot in Darul Aman Palace which was ruined during the civil war in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 28, 2011. Shamim and Mohammad met in Afghanistan and were married in 2011. A few years after their marriage, they emigrated to Europe and now live in Augsburg, Germany, with their six-year-old daughter.
2. As a sign of protest Afghan women carry the coffin of Farkhunda Malikzada who was publicly killed by an angry mob in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 19, 2015.
3. Feminist activist Mubareka Sahar Fetrat (left), 24, makes her way home after socializing with friends in a café in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 27, 2018.

Carol Guzy | United States

Carol Guzy was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and lived there until she completed her studies at Northampton County Area Community College, graduating with an Associate’s degree in Registered Nursing. A change of heart led her to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida to study photography. She graduated in 1980 with an Associate in Applied Science degree in Photography. While at the Art Institute, she interned at The Miami Herald and upon graduation was hired as a staff photographer. She spent eight years at the newspaper before moving to Washington, DC in 1988 where she became a staff photographer at The Washington Post through 2014. She is currently freelance.

She is the first journalist to receive a fourth Pulitzer for coverage of the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Previously she was honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and the devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia and for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo. She was named Photographer of the Year for the National Press Photographers Association three times and eight times for the White House News Photographers Association and has earned many other prestigious awards in her chosen profession of photojournalism. She specializes on long-form documentary human interest projects, news and feature stories, both domestic and international.

Image Captions

1. Daughter Guilene Filianse weeps during a village wake for her mother, Marie Herese Atineus who died when part of her home collapsed in a massive earthquake as residents cope with the aftermath in Maniche, Haiti on Friday August 20, 2021.
2. ‘If there is life, there is hope’ said Chrislom Adonnia. He joyfully hugs his baby Lorbensky Handel, grateful for donated tents as his family copes with aftermath of a massive earthquake in Maniche, Haiti on Thursday August 27, 2021. They lost their 3-year-old daughter and cling to their surviving baby with a cast on his broken leg, found under his uncle’s dead body on this lot where they strive to rebuild. Joy erupted as precious tents were placed on the empty space that once housed their memories, amid clotheslines of recently washed laundry and the wreckage of their former lives. For most Haitians it’s not about dying in the quake but rather living in the rubble of shattered lives and altered destinies where legendary Haitian resilience endures. They mourn, pray then move on with the task of living.
3. Kosovar refugee Agim Shala, 2 years old, is passed through the barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparents at the camp run by United Arab Emirates in Kukes, Albania during the Kosovo ethnic cleansing conflict on May 3, 1999. The members of the large Shala family were reunited here after fleeing Prizren in Kosovo during the brutal war. The grandparents had just crossed the border at Morina and had to stay outside the camp until shelter was available. The next day members of the family had tents inside. The fence was the scene of many reunions. When the peace agreement was signed, they returned to Prizren to find their homes only mildly damaged. There were tears of joy and sadness from the family as the children were passed through the fence, symbolic of innocence and horror of conflict.

The 2022 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Awards are made possible by:

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