The John Faber Award 2015

Left to right: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter.

Left to right: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter.

Best photographic reporting from abroad in newspapers or news services

AWARD YEAR: 2015

AWARD NAME: 05 The John Faber Award

RECIPIENTS: Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks and Daniel Etter

AFFILIATION: The New York Times

HONORED WORK: “Exodus”

This series of images on the migrant crisis contains strong elements of emotion and conflict, and offers engaging variety. As a package, the images are not only beautifully shot and edited but tell the broad story of the plight of the migrants and what they endured crossing border after border in hopes of a better life.

 


Migrants arrive by a Turkish boat near the village of Skala, on the Greek island of Lesbos. The Turkish boat owner delivered some 150 people to the Greek coast and tried to escape back to Turkey; he was arrested in Turkish waters.

Desperate refugees board the train toward Zagreb at Tovarnik station on the border with Serbia. As key nations tightened their borders, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers were bottled up in the Balkans, placing precarious new burdens on a region of lingering sectarian divisions that was exceptionally ill-prepared to handle the crisis.

Ahmad Majid, in blue T-shirt at center, sleeps on a bus floor with his children, his brother Farid Majid, in green sweater at right, and other members of their family and dozens of other refugees, after leaving Budapest on the way to Vienna. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, fled their homes, risking their lives in dangerous boat trips, illegal border crossings and long bus and train journeys, seeking asylum in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

Migrants walking past a church, escorted by Slovenian riot police to a registration camp outside Dobova, Slovenia. The small Balkan nations along the path of the human migration through Europe have seen record numbers of refugees cross their borders, and have been overwhelmed in their ability to manage the human flow.

A man tries to shield his child from police beatings and tear gas at the border crossing in Horgos, Serbia. Baton-wielding Hungarian riot police unleashed tear gas and water cannons against hundreds of migrants after they broke through a razor-wire fence and tried to surge into Hungary from Serbia.

Refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Algeria and Somalia struggling for donations of water, blankets, diapers and some clothes on their 10th day encamped near the border in Idomeni, Greece. They were not allowed to cross into the Macedonia; only refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were allowed to cross and continue their journeys.

Members of the Majid family sleep with their children in their arms in a wheat field as they wait to cross the barbed wire fence at Horgos, Serbia, into Hungary.

Refugees line up to be registered in a reception camp, in Gevgelija, Macedonia, so they can take a train to Belgrade, Serbia, and continue their journey through the Balkans toward Europe.

After battling rough seas and high winds from Turkey, migrants arrive by rubber raft on a jagged shoreline of the Greek island of Lesbos. Fearing capsize or puncture, some panicked and jumped into the cold water in desperation to reach land. This young boy made it, unlike hundreds of others.

The body of a refugee who attempted to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey, in the background, on the Greek island of Lesbos. Three other bodies, of a 12-year-old girl, a middle-age man and an elderly man, were also found that morning.

Laith Majid, an Iraqi, broke out in tears of joy, holding his son and daughter after they arrived safely in Kos, Greece, on a flimsy rubber boat.

A huge pile of discarded life vests, inner tubes and deflated rubber dinghies, the basic equipment that thousands of refugees have using to cross the Aegean sea from Turkey, at dusk on the Greek island of Lesbos.

 

Citation Recipient: Santi Palacios
Affiliation: The Associated Press
Honored Work: “Coming Ashore”
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