Adil Najam

The Pulitzer Prizes are the most prestigious journalistic awards in the world and winning any of these awards is as big an honor as a journalist can achieve. The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes were just announced and in the category of “Breaking News Photography” the winner is Adrees Latif of Reuters, a Pakistani-born, Bangkok-based news journalist.

The photograph that won him this honor (below) is of “a wounded Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, as he lay before a Burmese soldier in Yangon,Myanmar, as troops attacked protestors.” Mr. Nagai later dies. The photograph was published by Reuters on September 28, 2007.

According to the Pulitzer Prize website, the category in which Adrees Latif has won is for “a distinguished example of breaking news photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence or an album, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).” His citation reads:

Awarded to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his dramatic photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.

The biography of Adrees Latif, also according to the Pulitzer Prize website, reads:

Born in Lahore, Pakistan on July 21, 1973, Adrees Latif lived in Saudi Arabia before immigrating with his family to Texas in 1980. Latif worked as a staff photographer for The Houston Post from 1993 to 1996 before joining Reuters. Latif graduated from the University of Houston in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. Latif has worked for Reuters in Houston, Los Angeles before moving to Bangkok in 2003 where he covers news across Asia.

We at ATP are happy that at least we can spot talent – we have, in fact, been using one of his photographs as a front page splash image for a while (it is up now as the Front Page splash and on the left). Readers would remember, that earlier Ali Khurshid – another Pakistani photographer – had been honored by Time magazine; in that case too, we at ATP had featured his work well before Time did. Here is the picture from Adrees Latif we have been using since the elections:

The Reuters website will take you to more pictures from Adrees Latif, some of which are reproduced below:

A more detailed report from the Houston Chronicle recounts more about the photograph and the Adrees: