Brent Stirton is a Senior Photographer for Getty Images, based in New York. His award-winning work has been widely recognized for its powerful depiction of issues related to conflict, health and environmental issues. Stirton specializes in documentary work and is known for his alternative approaches to photojournalism, including lighting portraiture in the field, and his prolific work rate. He travels an average of nine months of the year, working exclusively on commissioned assignment.
Stirton’s work has appeared in Newsweek , National Geographic , CNN Traveler, The New York Times Magazine , The Washington Post Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine , Le Monde 2 , GQ , Geo and many other respected international titles. He also writes a blog for the Discovery Channel.
In working to visually interpret a story, Stirton often works in tandem with journalists from the world’s leading publications. In the last two years he has worked regularly with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper on topics such as the tsunami disaster or religious fundamentalism, compiling still documentaries on tropical news events which are then voiced over and aired.
He works extensively on humanitarian issues including HIV/AIDS, environment, poverty, conflict and post-conflict recovery, and women’s empowerment issues. Stirton works on a regular basis for the Global Business Coalition against AIDS and The Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He also works in the field for sustainability for The World Wide Fund for Nature, shooting global campaigns on the relationship between people and their environments. He also has worked for the Ford Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.
Stirton has won numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including seven awards from the World Press Photo Foundation; in 2007 he was cited as a “Hero of Photography” in PopPhoto Magazine. Stirton holds a degree in journalism from his native South Africa, where he began his career photographing apartheid issues.
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James Nachtwey is an American photojournalist and war photographer.
Larry Towell is a Canadian photographer, poet, and oral historian. Towell is known for his photographs of sites of political conflict in the Ukraine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Standing Rock and Afghanistan, among others. In 1988, Towell became the first Canadian member of Magnum Photos.
Marcus Terence Luke Bleasdale is a British photojournalist. His books include One Hundred Years of Darkness (2003), The Rape of a Nation (2009) and The Unravelling (2015). Bleasdale was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to international photojournalism and human rights.
Brian Skerry is an American photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine life and ocean environments. Since 1998 he has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic magazine with more than 30 stories to his credit, including 6 covers. In 2021 Skerry won a Primetime Emmy Award for his role as producer in the miniseries, Secrets of the Whales.
Stephen Alvarez is an American photojournalist. He is founder and president of the Ancient Art Archive, a global initiative to record, preserve, and share high-resolution images of ancient artwork. Throughout his career, he has produced global stories about exploration and culture. He became a National Geographic photographer in 1995. His pictures have won awards in Pictures of the Year International and Communications Arts and have been exhibited at Visa Pour L’Image International Photojournalism Festival in Perpignan, France.
Pablo Bartholomew is an Indian photojournalist and an independent photographer based in New Delhi, India. He is noted for his photography, as an educator running photography workshops, and as manager of MediaWeb, a software company specialising in photo database solutions and server-based digital archiving systems.
Adam Ferguson is an Australian freelance photographer who lives in New York City. His commissioned work has appeared in New York, Time, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, and National Geographic, among others. Ferguson's work focuses on conflict and on civilians caught amidst geopolitical forces. His portraits of various head's of state have appeared on numerous Time covers.
Lu Guang (卢广) is a Chinese independent photojournalist. His work consists of large documentary projects on social, environmental, and economic issues, exposing the lives of "people on the margins of Chinese society: coal miners, drug addicts, HIV patients." His stories on pollution and environmental destruction cover topics traditionally under-reported due to the risk of punishment by the Chinese government.
Daniel Beltrá is a Spanish photographer and artist who makes work about human impact on the environment.
Stephanie Sinclair is an American photojournalist who focuses on gender and human-rights issues such as child marriage and self-immolation. Her work has been included in The New York Times, Time Magazine and National Geographic.
Jan Grarup is a Danish photojournalist who has worked both as a staff photographer and as a freelance, specializing in war and conflict photography. He has won many prizes including the World Press Photo award for his coverage of the war in Kosovo.
Pete Muller is an American photographer, filmmaker, visual artist and professor based in New York City and Portland, Maine. His work focuses on masculinity, conflict and human ecology. He has won awards from World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, The Overseas Press Club and others. He is a current storytelling fellow at the National Geographic Society.
George Steinmetz is an American photographer. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, Time, The New York Times Magazine, GEO, and he is a regular contributor to National Geographic.
Gideon Mendel is a South African photographer, based in London. His work engages with contemporary social issues of global concern. It was his work as a 'struggle photographer' during the final years of apartheid in the 1980s that first brought attention to his work.
Andrew Esiebo is a Nigerian photographer. He has covered personal projects and assignments on primarily Nigeria and West Africa but has gained international recognition.
Anastasia Taylor-Lind is an English/Swedish photojournalist. She works for leading editorial publications globally on issues relating to women, population and war. She has lived in Damascus, Beirut, Kiev and New York City and is now based in London. As a photographic storyteller, Taylor-Lind's work has focused on long-form narrative reportage for monthly magazines.
Mads Nissen is a Danish documentary photographer and winner of 2015 and 2021 World Press Photo of the Year and 2023 World Press Photo Story of the Year.
Muhammed Muheisen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and the recipient of numerous international awards. He is a National Geographic photographer and the founder of the Dutch non-profit organization Everyday Refugees Foundation.
James Oatway is a South African photojournalist. He was the Chief Photographer of the Sunday Times until 2016. His work focuses mainly on political and social issues in Africa, migration and people affected by conflict.
The Siena International Photo Awards (SIPAContest) is a photography competition for professional, amateur and student photographers from around the world. It is judged by an international panel of experts that includes renowned photographers, editors and photography collectors. First presented in 2015, by their second year the awards and the associated Siena Awards Festival in Siena, Italy, were considered prestigious.
