AFP photographer wins agency’s 1st Pulitzer Prize

AFP photographer wins agency’s 1st Pulitzer Prize

PanARMENIAN.Net - Agence France-Presse (AFP) has won its first Pulitzer Prize, with Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini scooping up the honour in breaking news photography, AFP reported.

Hossaini, 30, was awarded the most prestigious U.S. journalism prize for his "heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber's attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul," the Pulitzer committee said Monday, April 16.

Hossaini's picture of an Afghan girl standing among a pile of dead bodies captured the devastation in the immediate aftermath of the attack on a Shiite shrine and was published in newspapers and on websites around the world.

Hossaini - who joined AFP in 2007 - was just meters (yards) away when the bomb went off on December 6, 2011, killing at least 70 people.

AFP chief executive Emmanuel Hoog congratulated Hossaini on winning AFP's first Pulitzer. "The Pulitzer Prize committee has honoured one of our bravest and best photo-journalists, Massoud Hossaini, and the award is recognition of AFP's insistence on quality and commitment across the range of journalistic pursuits," Hoog said. "Bravo and congratulations to Massoud.”

"Today, in the news arena, words without images are impoverished and pictures without text are not enough," he said. "The two complement each other and images - fixed or moving - are essential to the journalism of the 21st century."

Hossaini, who is based in Kabul, said Tuesday he was "shocked and happy" to receive the news. "This is not just about winning an award because I know I have become a voice for the Afghan people and those who lost their lives in the suicide attacks and for all victims of the war," he said.

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