FCAEA MEMBER WINS WORLD PRESS PHOTO OF THE YEAR

The FCAEA is pleased to congratulate Nairobi-based photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba for for winning the World Press Photo of the Year for his moving image of a young man reciting protest poetry during a blackout in Khartoum, Sudan in 2019.

“The place was a total blackout. Then, unexpectedly, people started clapping hands in the dark. People held up mobile phones to illuminate a young man in the center. He recited a famous protest poem, an improvised one. Between his breath, everybody shouted ‘thawra’, the word revolution in Arabic. His facial expression and voice impressed me, I couldn’t stop focusing on him and captured the moment,” said Yasuyoshi Chiba to World Press Photo.

Straight up by Yasuyoshi Chiba, Japan, Agence France-Presse.

Chiba is Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) Chief Photographer for East Africa and Indian Ocean, currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. After studying photography at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, he started working as a staff photographer for Asahi Shimbun. He became a freelance photographer and moved to Kenya in 2007, and then joined AFP in Brazil in 2011 reports World Press Photo.

See Chiba’s photo and a video profiling his work on World Press Photo.

Congrats again Chiba!