Photographer Alessio Remenzi has been covering conflict in the Middle East since the Arab Spring and was among the first photographers smuggled into Syria to cover the civil war. Most recently he has been covering the battle for Mosul, Iraq. He was previously interviewed by The Times in 2012. He recently discussed covering the fighting in Iraq.
This year’s Pictures of the Year International contest recognizes the work of photographers on daily newspaper assignments or long-term projects to recognizing new ways of visual storytelling.
Each year, the contest adds an “Impact” category about a major news topic. Last year’s was “Exodus,” based on the global refugee crisis. This year, the category was “The Islamic State Conflict” and first place was awarded to Alessio Romenzi.
Rick Shaw, the director of POYi, said the quality of work in that category showed that visual journalists “continue to put themselves in harm’s way and continue to shed light on the people who are affected by the conflict.”
Italian photographer Alessio Romenzi harbors no illusions that his images of dead civilians—many of them children—caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will have an impact on the conflict. But he can’t stay away from the story.
For its second edition, the Prix Lucas Dolega was awarded on Friday, January 18, at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, to the Italian photographer Alessio Romenzi for his work in Syria.
Meanwhile, in al-Qsair, a town south of Homs, government marksmen continued to take their toll. Says Alessio Romenzi, a photographer on assignment in the area for TIME: “The snipers do not sleep.”
Photographer Alessio Romenzi has been among just such enemies of the Assad government: with fighters of the Free Syrian Army and with the people of Bab Amr, a rebellious district in the besieged city of Homs. On assignment for TIME, he took shelter with local families in a basement of Bab Amr. No one dared to step outside or even venture upstairs for fear of government shells crashing onto them. Bodies were dragged into homes from the street so they would not rot in the open. The dead littered the corridors. It was too dangerous to hold funerals. Romenzi counted 25 civilian fatalities in just two hours of bombardment in his immediate area. As he wrote in an email, “The word ‘safe’ is not in our dictionary these days.”
