Tyler Hicks, Christopher Anderson Win Top POYi Awards

Updated March 5

New York Times staff photographer Tyler Hicks and Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson have won top honors in the Pictures of the Year International competition, which is currently being judged at the University of Missouri.

Hicks was named newspaper photographer of the year for a portfolio that includes coverage of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, the war in Afghanistan, wounded American veterans, and poverty in Camden, N.J.

Anderson was named magazine photographer of the year for work including images from Venezuela, Gaza and Lebanon. Just last week, Anderson was named the winner of a $20,000 Getty Images Grant for Editorial Imagery. (Related story.)

More POYi winners, in the editing and multimedia categories, are due to be announced in the coming days. A list of winners is available at poyi.org.

Other photographers nominated for newspaper photographer of the year were David Guttenfelder of The Associated Press (second place), Rick Loomis of The Los Angeles Times (third place), Paula Bronstein of Getty Images (award of excellence) and Carolyn Cole of The Los Angeles Times (award of excellence).

Getty Images photographer Farah Nosh was the second place winner in the magazine photographer of the year category. Nosh also won first place in the magazine portrait category for a picture of an 8-year-old student in Afghanistan. Third place in magazine photographer of the year was Espen Rasmussen of the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.

Highlights of the magazine division winners included an image of a police officer's body being dragged through the street in Srinagar, India, photographed by Dar Yasin of the The Associated Press, which won first place in the spot news category. Redux photographer Q. Sakamaki won first place in the general news reporting category for a story on Sri Lankan political violence for Newsweek. Yoon S. Byun of Ohio University won the community awareness award for a story about a family farm.

The general/newspaper division winners, which were announced earlier, consist largely of war-related photos, particularly images from the Middle East.

Mohammed Ballas of The Associated Press won first place in the spot news category for an image of a public execution in the West Bank.

In the human conflict category, Oded Balilty of The Associated Press won first place for a photo of a clash in the West Bank, while Hicks was recognized for his Lebanon work with a first-place award in the human conflict picture story category.

Another series from Lebanon, "34 Days of Pain" by Carolyn Cole of The Los Angeles Times, won first place in the news picture story category.

Among the most disturbing images to win were from Getty Images photographer Paula Bronstein's "Broken Lives" series, a story about Afghan women who are victims of self-immolation. It won first place in the issue reporting picture story category.

Even the sports awards were saturated with violent images.

In the sports picture story category, first place went to a story by freelancer Meredith Davenport about "Airsoft" players, who practice war games using realistic-looking weapons. An image of a battered boxer by Sam Morris of The Las Vegas Sun won first place in sports feature. Bruce Ely of The Oregonian won first place in the sports action category for an image of a horse race described as "an invitation for broken bones and other injuries."

Breaking from that pattern, Donald Miralle of Getty Images won first place in sports portfolio for a collection of majestic sports images. It is Miralle's second year in a row of winning that category.

But a sports photo was among the most painful images in the whole competition: The second-place sports feature winner, by Jonne Roriz of Agencia Estado, showing a track-and-field judge in Brazil who was accidentally impaled by a javelin.

Related stories

• Feb. 28: Christopher Anderson, Ziyah Gafic Are Getty Grant Winners


• Oct. 4, 2006: Tyler Hicks: Lebanon Caption Controversy Wasn't My Fault


• March 9, 2006: Pictures Of The Year Winners Announced