Daniel Berehulak, a freelance photographer who often works for The New York Times, has won the 2014 Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award. Preston Gannaway, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer based in Oakland, Calif., was selected as the award finalist.
The award was created to honor Mr. Hondros, who was killed in April 2011 while on assignment in Libya. Mr. Berehulak will receive a $20,000 grant, and Ms. Gannaway will receive a $5,000 grant to support documentary projects.
The jury consisted of Pancho Bernasconi, vice president for editorial imagery at Getty Images; Todd Heisler of The New York Times; Jeff Swenson, a freelance photographer based in Pittsburgh; and Christina Piaia, who started the fund after Mr. Hondros, her fiancé, died. The award focuses not only on the quality of the photographs but also on the photographers’ character as well, Ms. Piaia said.
“Daniel has an ability to capture quiet, intimate moments among chaos, and there is a tenderness to his work,” she said. “He treats his colleagues and subjects with compassion and respect.”
It was three years ago this week that Mr. Hondros was mortally wounded while covering the Libyan uprising in Misurata, hours after filing intensely close-up pictures of the fighting between rebel and government forces. The photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was also killed in the attack.
“It’s certainly humbling,” Mr. Berehulak said in a phone conversation from New Delhi. “Chris had so much integrity and ethics. He was completely committed and dedicated. For me, receiving this award is a kind of validation that I am on the right track, that I am somehow following in his footsteps.”
Mr. Berehulak started off as a sports photographer in Australia and worked for Getty Images from 2005 to 2013, becoming more focused on covering news. Mr. Berehulak said that he often turned to Mr. Hondros for guidance either through email or when they were both in Getty’s offices in New York at the same time.
“I wasn’t that experienced at news at all, so Chris would, like an older brother figure, give me advice,” Mr. Berehulak said.
Mr. Berehulak, 38, has become well known for his news coverage and was named freelance photographer of the year in the 2014 Pictures of the Year International contest. He left his staff position at Getty Images in 2013 to pursue long-term projects and retain the rights to his images, he said. He has freelanced extensively for The New York Times since then, working in Afghanistan, Brazil and South Africa. He is based in Delhi, India, and is represented by Reportage by Getty Images.
Working with New York Times journalists and having the resources of a large news organization behind him has enabled him to thrive during the last year, Mr. Berehulak said.
David Furst, the international picture editor for The Times, who previously was a photographer for Agence France-Presse, has worked next to Mr. Berehulak in the Middle East.
“The most important thing about Daniel is that he’s a good person who wants to do right by the people he photographs,” Mr. Furst said.
Mr. Berehulak said he had been searching for a personal project that was deeply meaningful for him and would put the prize money aside until he finds the right story. In the meantime, he will continue to push himself to benefit from what he learns on each assignment.
“I’m still learning and I’m still growing as a photographer,” he said. “I’m trying to grow more as a journalist and understand the story I’m photographing in order to communicate it in a better way.”
The awards will be presented to Mr. Berehulak and Ms. Gannaway at the Aperture Gallery in New York on May 7 at 6:30 p.m. There will be a silent auction to benefit the Chris Hondros Fund.
Ms. Gannaway won a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography in 2008 for her story on a family’s struggles with cancer. She has worked as a staff photojournalist for The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, where she won her Pulitzer; The Rocky Mountain News in Denver; and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.
She left the Virginian-Pilot last year to freelance in Northern California, when her partner, Nicole Frugé, got a job as deputy director of photography at The San Francisco Chronicle.
Her first book, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” about the changing character of a working-class seaside community in Norfolk, is due to be published in June.
Unlike the previous winners and finalists of the Hondros Award, Ms. Gannaway has devoted her career almost exclusively to working in the United States and pursuing in-depth, intimate stories, like her story on Teddy, a gay African-American teenager from Chesapeake, Va.
“I think what’s most moving to me is work that feels like community photojournalism, and I think that that can be done in safe places or conflict zones,” she said. “What’s important is the personal and emotional involvement.”
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