# data[].attributes.body
Sergey Ponomarev was born in Moscow Russia. He is well known for his pictures of life in Russia, and his pictures of the Middle East. He is a conflict photographer, and he goes to areas where there is unrest to take pictures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sergey Ponomarev is a freelance photographer. Born in Moscow, December 1980. Before becoming a freelancer and frequent contributor for NYT in 2012, Sergey worked for the Associated Press starting in 2003. Sergey is best known for his photojournalism works depicting Russian daily life and culture as well as news images from wars and conflicts in Middle East including Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.

# data[].attributes.body
Sergey Ponomarev won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his pictures Syrian refugees on their way to Greece. He was taking the pictures for the New York Times. In order to take the pictures, he followed some of the refugees on part of their journey. He also won Magnum Photography Awards and first place from World Press Photo.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis" by photographer Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times which won the first prize in the General News Stories category shows refugees arriving by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece, 16 November 2015.

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times, World Press Photo via AP

'Reporting Europe's refugee crisis' by photographer Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times won the World Press photo first prize in the General News Stories category and the Pulitzer Prize. Click to enlarge the image

Sergey Ponomarev took his now famous picture of a boat of Syrian refugees mooring to a Greek island shore on Nov. 16, 2015. Many boats were landing there at the time - on some days, up to 50 would arrive from Turkey. The majority were inflatable rubber dinghies, but some of the boats were wooden, and you could always tell that the refugees preferred to have a wooden boat.

Ponomarev was there to photograph the landings for The New York Times.

"Every day, long before sunrise, we would go to the beach. There was a hill there; I climbed it with my binoculars and watched the horizon, waiting for the first boats to arrive," Ponomarev recalls. "We would often spend the whole day on the beach, going from boat to boat. The boat from the picture was one of them."

From the beaches in Greece, Ponomarev followed the refugees to Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, all the way to European countries where they would seek asylum. Off and on, he would spend five months working on this project.

Exactly five months after Ponomarev took his iconic picture, he won the most coveted journalistic award in the world - the Pulitzer Prize. "It's really something. I suppose it means that this last year I did good," he told The Moscow Times.

Ponomarev says he is motivated above all by a desire to bridge the gap that people introduce between themselves and human tragedies elsewhere in the world.

"I want to show that the world is much bigger than an apartment or an office," he says, "and that at any given minute there are people living lives far worse than our own."

The road to Pulitzer

Sergey Ponomarev. Source: Press photo

Ponomarev, 35, is the third Russian photographer to have won the Pulitzer Prize. The significance of the award is not, apparently, lost on him. Throughoutour interview, the photographer is interrupted by dozens of messages and emails congratulating him on the victory. "Wow," he says at one point, "I just received a message from James Nachtwey. The great James Nachtwey!"

Nachtwey, the world famous war photographer, had in fact praised Ponomarev's skills to The Moscow Times before the interview. "Sergey's visual perception operates at a very high level. He has the ability to organize what he perceives in a compelling, complex manner using the full range of photographic vocabulary with great mastery," Nachtwey said.

Ponomarev's path to Pulitzer took him through wars, conflict zones and tragedies.

He worked in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004, where terrorists attacked a school and held dozens of children hostage. He covered "Nord-Ost," another Russian hostage crisis in 2002, when terrorists attacked theater-goers in Moscow. He documented atrocities in the war-torn Gaza strip in Palestine, revolution in Libya, the Maidan protests in Ukraine, and military clashes in eastern Ukraine and Syria.

However, Ponomarev refuses to define himself as just a war photographer. "You may think of me as such because there's a picture of me wearing a bulletproof vest on my website," he says with a laugh.

"But I see my role as simply developing stories that are meant to disturb the world."

He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, which he says is currently his "most active" working partnership. Previously he worked for nine years as a staff photographer at the Associated Press news agency and contributed to Russian outlets including the Kommersant newspaper and Gazeta.ru.

"The media in Russia has changed a lot since then," he says. "The vast majority have lost their independence and are now on one or the other side of the fence. I prefer to work for outlets that are more independent."

Russian riot police disperse opposition protesters in Moscow. May 2012. Source: Sergey Ponomarev / AP

Ponomarev is lucky to partner with a newspaper like The New York Times, says another illustrious Russian war photographer, the multi-award-winning Yury Kozyrev. "It is great that they give photographers time and resources to pursue important stories, like the refugee story," he told The Moscow Times. "Its rare these days, and not only in Russia, but the whole world."

Competing with kittens

"People see the world through our eyes," says Ponomarev. "I attended a conference on refugees once. The speakers were all about numbers and statistics, and I could tell no one there had ever seen these refugees. My speech was the last one that day - and the photographs I showed simply bowled the audience over." Photography is a universal storytelling language, he says. "People don't need to know a foreign language to understand photographs."

Arguably, photography is losing its power to change the course of events. No longer can it stop a war like it could in the 1960s and 1970s, says Ponomarev.

Then, the whole world was shaken by Nick Ut's image of a naked girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, and by Eddie Adams' picture of a police chief executing a young man in the street in war-torn Saigon.

"Those explosive images made society demand an end to the war," he says. "Now serious photographs with bloody or violent scenes are hidden behind age restrictions and notes that sensitive people shouldn't look at them. They don't shock people as much."

Occasionally, society is moved to act. Images of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach caused public outcry across the world.

Members of the Russian radical feminist group Pussy Riot try to perform at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow in February 2012. Two members of Pussy Riot were jailed. Source: Sergey Ponomarev / AP

It prompted heated discussion and divisions inside the professional community as to whether such disturbing images should be published. "Personally I'm against all these restrictions," Ponomarev says.

"The more people see injustice, the more they are willing to change it," he adds.

The other major threat for serious photographers is the increasing battle for visual attention with light entertainment.

"We are losing the battle with kittens and boobs," the photographer concedes. "But I'm certain we won't lose in the end - kittens and easy visual pleasures might be constants, but we are always coming up with something new."
First published by The Moscow Times.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pulitzer Prize winner Ponomarev looks for stories to 'disturb the world'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this image released by World Press Photo titled "Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis" by photographer Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times which won the first prize in the General News Stories category shows refugees arriving by boat near the village of Skala on Lesbos, Greece, 16 November 2015.

# data[].attributes.body
In 2011, protests against the government began and refugee camps began to open up in countries such as Turkey. By September of 2013, there were 2 million refugees. In addition, there were 4.25 million internally displaced people.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Syria Fact Sheet - Timeline and Figures | UNHCR

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Looking for data? Browse UNHCR data and global statistics.

# data[].attributes.body
From his social media platform, it is evident that he uses it for photography. This demonstrates that photography is his main interest, not just his job. He is dedicated to sharing his pictures with others as well as providing information about each of the photos.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
#Repost @nytimes ・・・ The Battle for #Stalingrad raged for 200 days, and the city was reduced to ruins. Civilians who couldn't evacuate starved, some eating rats and clay. Resistance to the German onslaught was fierce. The defending army had no choice but to fend off the attack or die standing, following Stalin's order: "Not one step back." By the time the battle was over, the population of half a million had been reduced to just 35,000. Since World War II, Stalingrad has been rebuilt and renamed; today, it's known as Volgograd. The photographer @sergeyponomarev, who visited recently, grew up "like every Russian schoolchild," learning about "Hitler's murderous advance into Russia during World War II, and how it was halted at the Battle of Stalingrad," he writes. Working as a conflict photographer today, he often wonders if other cities destroyed by war will ever look and feel like Stalingrad does today. This statue, "The Motherland Calls," is the tallest in Europe. "Visible from almost every vantage point in the city, the statue is a powerful reminder of the price that Soviet people paid to defeat Nazism," @sergeyponomarev writes. Visit the link in our profile to see more of his photos from #Volgograd, 75 years later.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1,319 Likes, 15 Comments - Sergey Ponomarev (@sergeyponomarev) on Instagram: "#Repost @nytimes ・・・ The Battle for #Stalingrad raged for 200 days, and the city was reduced to..."

# data[].attributes.body
According to the map, from 2011-2016, Germany had the largest number of Syrian refugees in the EU. Sweden had the second most. In addition, the United States sends the most humanitarian aid. In the European Union, Germany sends the most humanitarian aid.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Syrian Refugees project was part of the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, Florence.

# data[].attributes.body
Peaceful protests against the government led to violence between the government and those protesting. As a result, the Free Syrian Army was formed, and it was made of citizens. Ethnic and religious undertones escalated the violence and contributed to the political tension.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than nine years in, Syria’s civil war has fueled a massive exodus. See the staggering statistics and learn the facts behind the figures.

# data[].attributes.body
The places where the people live are being destroyed, food is scarce, and it is estimated that half the prewar population is displaced.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than nine years in, Syria’s civil war has fueled a massive exodus. See the staggering statistics and learn the facts behind the figures.

# data[].attributes.body
Sergey Ponomarev shot his award winning photo series in the middle of the chaos of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. In an interview, he said that he pities the people who have to flee. This is expressed in some of his work because many of his pictures depict hardship. He took his pictures at many times throughout the journey of the refugees and in places such as Greece and Serbia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This important and compelling documentary series was selected as a finalist in the Photojournalism category of the Magnum Photography Awards 2016. Discover more inspiring work from all 44 of the winners, finalists, jurors' picks and student spotlight award winners.

Europe is experiencing one of the most significant influxes of migrants and refugees in its recent history. Pushed by civil war and terror and pulled by the promise of a better life, hundreds of thousands of people have fled the Middle East and Africa, risking their lives along the way.

The scale of the crisis has put huge pressures on some destination countries, particularly Germany, Greece, Austria, and Hungary. The 28 member states of the European Union registered around 627,000 asylum claims in 2014; in 2015, that number increased dramatically to 1.3 million.

People undertake such a dangerous journey for varying reasons, including the conflicts raging in Syria and Afghanistan and the human rights abuses in Eritrea. 54% of the refugees in 2015 came from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. There are also people setting out from Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Eritrea and beyond hoping to find a new lives somewhere in Germany, France or the UK.

The most direct routes are fraught with danger. Most of those heading for Greece take the relatively short voyage from Turkey to the islands of Kos, Chios, Lesbos and Samos-often in flimsy rubber dinghies or small wooden boats.

There is virtually no infrastructure on these small Greek islands to cope with the thousands of people arriving; this means that local volunteers provide vital assistance.

Many refugees attempting to reach Germany and other northern EU countries travel via the perilous Western Balkans route, where they run the risk of encountering brutal human traffickers and robbers. Faced with a huge influx of people, Hungary has built a controversial 175km (110-mile) razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia. It has also urged EU partners not to send back migrants who have travelled through Hungary.

Under an EU rule known as the "Dublin Regulation," refugees are required to claim asylum in the member state in which they first arrive. But some EU countries-such as Greece, Italy and Croatia-have been allowing migrants to pass through without registering.

-Sergey Ponomarev

Interview

Sergey Ponomarev has had a very productive stretch recently: thanks to his work on "The Exodus" (shot in large part for The New York Times), Ponomarev received prizes ranging from the Magnum Photography Awards to the Pulitzer Prize as well as a First Prize from World Press Photo.

The photographer's strongest image in the series has been compared to the celebrated 19th century painting "The Raft of the Medusa" by the French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault-high praise, and well deserved.

Ponomarev is no romantic. He is a working conflict photographer, and as such he travels to areas that are experiencing significant upheaval and unrest. LensCulture contributor Anna Akage spoke with him at length. Below, Akage and Ponomarev speak about topics ranging from the ambiguities of modern-day warfare to the new censorship that photography faces in our changing media environment.

LC: Can you tell us about what it was like to be on the ground with the refugees? How close did you get to the conflict?

SP: I started shooting on the island of Lesbos at the beginning of August 2015. We spent our first three days waiting to see just one boat. But by October, the trickle turned into a stream of fifty boats a day. We watched the sea from the hills, and we moved quickly from one beach to another to photograph. After that, I went with the refugees to continental Greece, and from there we took the so-called "Balkan Pass": Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and then into the rest of Western Europe.

Most of the time, I traveled with them-I took the same roads and used the same methods of transportation. I even shared water and food with the refugees.

But there were always enough volunteers there as well, so I can't say I helped them much with the basics. More often it was about communication-I could tell them what lay ahead, what kind of camps to expect, what kind of transport would work best. So I was with them and not with them at the same time. After all, there was one key difference between us-I was able to cross the borders officially...

LC: How were you welcomed by your subjects?

SP: At first, the refugees didn't trust us photographers: they covered their faces and told us that they didn't want to be photographed. Even so, many of them did understand that they are a part of a key historical event, and that we were only trying to publicize their story-maybe even generate some help. So, over time, the refugees became used to our presence and started to act more friendly (except in those moments when they were simply too tired to be photographed).

But even with our good intentions, there were many hard moments: children crying, wanting to eat or sleep or go to the toilet. Women carrying heavy things and understanding nothing; men exhausted because of the travel and pressure and uncertainty. And through it all, nobody really knows what they're doing or where they're going. All of these circumstances had to be taken into consideration as we-the photographers-tried to keep our relationship with them friendly and open.

LC: What was your attitude on the subject? Did it change over time?

SP: I pitied them. I also understand that the European Union has to shoulder a lot of responsibility as a result of the turmoil in the Middle East. Though it's impossible to generalize completely-we met so many refugees-almost all of my interactions were with very civilized and educated people.

But there's another side to the story: social media. I learned that for some refugees, the process of seeking a better life turned into an internet phenomenon in their homeland. Thanks to the ubiquitousness of cell phones, the refugees were constantly sharing their daily travel experiences on social networks. This likely encouraged others to follow in their footsteps.

Remember, Facebook is very different in Russia, England, America, or any Arab-speaking country. When I saw my Arab colleague's Facebook timeline, it was packed with stories from refugees. There were even advertisements published by smugglers.

All of that is to say that in order to do my job effectively and remain objective, I had to keep both sides in mind.

LC: What makes it difficult to communicate with people who are in conflict situations?

SP: Propaganda. The longer the conflict exists, the harder it is to find people thinking critically and clearly. In the early stages of any conflict, the media environment is more diversified, and communication is much easier. People are less aggressive towards the ideas that break official lines and thus are able to empathize with the other side. Later, the positions harden beyond all hope. This happens even with independent photojournalists who have spent too much time in a specific conflict zone; I've met professionals in Ukraine, Israel and Syria who became too attached to one of the sides and lost their professional objectivity.

LC: What did you find most challenging about this project?

SP: Technically there were no problems at all. As I am a minimalist in my working methods-I never carry a battery of lenses, I work with natural light, etc.-I had few problems. Still, it was physically difficult to walk that much and emotionally draining to see so many people venturing out into the darkness.

More than that, I carried with me the knowledge of what lay ahead-the resentment of locals when refugees entered their towns, or countries in the EU maintaining that they couldn't accept more people.

There were moments while I was following the stream of humanity when I felt, truly, that these people weren't moving towards a better life.

Things seemed especially grim when officials started to close the borders and the first camps appeared. By that point, it was the middle of the winter, and there were people trying to survive in the cold mud and driving rain. To watch all of that was very challenging.

LC: You worked in the Gaza Strip before this and took no particular interest in Palestinian refugees; later, you became interested in the European refugee crisis. Why?

SP: What happened to the Palestinians began long, long before I arrived. Meanwhile, in Europe, I was witnessing the most active phase of the crisis. While it had been clear for some time that Europe was going to face some pressure from migrants-there were already paths from Morocco and Libya-when the new path opened through Greece, it reached a tipping point. That's what I wanted to capture.

Now that I've become so involved with the story I want to follow it further. I recently received a grant from Getty, and I plan to cover the second stage of the refugee story, namely the temporary settlements in the EU.

LC: But it's worth noting that Europe, compared to Africa and the Middle East, is facing a much smaller stream of refugees-just about 7% according to the UNHCR. Yet it's claiming all of the media attention...

SP: Absolutely. Lebanon is making hardly any noise about hosting well over one million refugees, and their total population is only around four million. In my opinion, this goes back to the immense cultural differences between the Middle East and Europe; the differences in lifestyles, laws, family structures and traditions are vast. This distinction is visible in everything from the fashion, to the court system, to the way the refugees are being welcomed or turned away.

LC: This refugee series has received numerous awards. Despite your career in the field, however, you often discuss war with a certain disdain-why?

SP: For me, war is something grand like "The Great Patriotic War" [Editors' note: this is the Russian term for World War II] or even the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (at the beginning, anyways). There, you have two sides openly and officially in a state of war with one another: each side takes responsibility for its actions. But what is happening nowadays, just about everywhere in the world, is more "conflict" than war.

For example, in many conflict zones, you can't sit on the front line waiting for news because the front line is 60 kilometers [around 37 miles] wide. Furthermore, there won't be any actual contact-just artillery firing indiscriminately. In some places, there is no defined front line or organized opposition. You can see this in Gaza. On the Strip, you're standing next to soldiers and civilians, but you can't tell the difference between the two.

In short: there is no singular combat-there is only omnipresent conflict. To shoot this new reality, we have to work differently: we run alongside the rebels, mingle with the targeted crowd, and go where things are hot and chaotic. Being a conflict photographer now is more dangerous than ever before.

LC: So the production has become more dangerous, and meanwhile the distribution is under cataclysmic shifts. What is your view on the modern media landscape vis-a-vis conflict photography?

SP: Photography used to have an effect and a serious impact on public opinion. Photographs used to help stop wars-just think of what happened with Vietnam. Images of Africans starving in the 80s had a similar effect. But now we have internet users who randomly scroll across endless pages and occasionally come across a photo from a war that shows dead bodies or drowned children or bombed houses. Instead of being distressed and enraged by the imagery, these users are more likely to get worked up because the scenes are ruining their morning coffee.

In terms of distribution, so many media outlets have started warning viewers of *graphic content*. This stops many people from ever seeing the images. For those who do click, it usually goes something like this: they click, exhale, press "watch," and scan the screen as quickly as possible before jumping to another page and another distraction. All of this pushes people into their isolated bubbles. Suffering and injustices from around the world simply disappear. We war and conflict photographers are still producing work, but we're creating images that most people block out of their lives.

Perhaps crueler images would have a greater chance of making an impact. Maybe they could halt the conflicts or cause combatants to act with more humanity. Instead it is likely that these harder pictures just won't show up on anyone's newsfeed-they won't generate enough likes in the algorithm to make it to the surface. Recently, Facebook tried to censor the image of the Vietnamese girl made by Nick Ut before relenting. This is a disturbing sign of things to come.

-Sergey Ponomarev, interviewed by Anna Akage

Anna Akage is freelance writer from Kiev, Ukraine. More of her work can be found on her writing portfolio website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Refugee Crisis in Europe - Interview with Sergey Ponomarev | LensCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This important and compelling documentary series was selected as a finalist in the Photojournalism category of the Magnum Photography Awards 2016. Discover more inspiring work from all 44 of the winners, finalists, jurors' picks and student spotlight award winners. Europe is experiencing one of the most significant influxes of migrants and refugees in its recent history.

# data[].attributes.body
Sergey Ponomarev produces pictures for the New York Times. The New York Times asked him to photograph the landing of refugees in Greece.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sergey Ponomarev (photographer) - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sergey Igorevich Ponomarev ( Russian: Сергей Игоревич Пономарёв, 11 December 1980, Moscow) is a Russian photographer. In 2016 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography with Mauricio Lima, Tyler Hicks, and Daniel Etter "For photographs that captured the resolve of refugees, the perils of their journeys and the struggle of host countries to take them in."

# data[].attributes.body
The pictures would reach a western audience. This is because the New York Times is a magazine that is produced in the United States. The photographer most likely wants people  in the United States to see these pictures.

# data[].attributes.body
I think that Sergey Ponomarev's main purpose for these photos is to give people in the West exposure to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. He may have wanted to communicate the intensity and devastation that marks the Syrian Refugee Crisis.