AFP’s Fabio Bucciarelli and Javier Manzano win Bayeux Calvados Awards

Fabio Bucciarelli has won a €7000 cash prize at the 20th Bayeux Calvados Awards for an image shot in Syria of “a wounded young Syrian who sits at the back of a truck after an attack carried out by President Assad’s forces on a Shaar neighbourhood.”

Bucciarelli, who works for Agence France-Presse, came ahead of Reuters’ photographer Goran Tomasevic and CNN’s Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, both of whom were also commended for their work in Syria.

The Public Photo Prize was awarded to another Agence France-Presse stringer, Javier Manzano, who will receive €3000 for an image also shot in Aleppo, Syria. Manzano won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year for the same work. He spoke to BJP at the time about the danger of covering the Syrian conflict as an independent photographer.

“Security is an issue we all take seriously,” Manzano told BJP. “The difference is that if an independent journalist gets kidnapped or killed, he or she will most likely be labelled as ‘an irresponsible daredevil’. If a staffer from a large organisation is kidnapped, he or she will most likely get television interviews and praise for ‘risking it all’ to get the story. We as freelance journalists obsess about security and safety every day, all day long. We stay inside Syria longer and because of this have a fairly good grasp of the conditions on the ground. I believe the level and calibre of work being produced by freelancers inside Syria is highly commendable. At the end of the day, we are here because we just want to work.”

The 20th Bayeux Calvados Awards were marked by the confirmation that two French journalists, including photographer Pierre Torrès, have been missing since June this year, in addition to Edouard Elias and Didier François. Torrès, with his colleague and writer Nicolas Hénin, were abducted on 22 June.

“Today, journalists are targets in this war,” Jean-Philippe Rémy, Le Monde’s bureau chief in Africa, commented on Friday evening at the Bayeux Calvados Awards. “The hunting season is open.” Rémy collaborated with photographer Laurent Van Der Stockt earlier this year to bring back proof of use of chemical weapons in Syria. The special report received the Written Press and the Web Journalism awards in Bayeux.

For more information, visit www.prixbayeux.org.

Two rebel soldiers in Syria guard their sniper’s nest in the Karmel Jabl neighborhood of Aleppo as light streams through more than a dozen holes made by bullets and shrapnel in the tin wall behind them. The dust from more than one hundred days of shelling, bombing and firefights hung in the air. Karmel Jabl is strategically important because of its proximity to the main road that separates several of the main battlegrounds in the city. Both sides (the Free Syria Army and the regime) rely heavily on snipers in a cat and mouse game along Aleppo’s frontlines. Image © Javier Manzano / AFP.