The Reuters photography grant program, launched in 2017, will be expanded and renamed for long-time Reuters photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Yannis Behrakis, who passed away last week.
The program, which Yannis led, seeks to recruit and develop a diverse new generation of young photojournalists, something he was incredibly passionate about. It will relaunch for the 2020 grants under Yannis’s name with increased grants of $8k available to recipients.
Reuters photographer Yannis Behrakis, who led a team of photographers that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for coverage of Europe’s migrant refugee crisis, died March 2 of cancer, according to Reuters. He was 58.
His hand on his heart, lips trembling, Yannis Behrakis came up to receive his second award of the evening: the “Prix Photo AFD Grand Public”. Known as a good-hearted man as well as for his talent as a committed photographer, with his trophy in his hand, he announced, out of respect for the people of Bayeux, that he had donated his award money (3,000€) to Médecins sans Frontières.