Photojournalist Javier Manzano to receive 2016 Pell Center Prize

salvetoday Posted On March 17, 2016
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Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and documentary filmmaker Javier Manzano, whose career has taken him to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Nigeria, among many other places, is the 2016 winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. The prize honors a storyteller whose work has significantly influenced the public dialogue.

As the fourth winner of the prize, conferred by the Story in the Public Square program at the Pell Center, Manzano joins journalist and two-time Pulitzer winner Dana Priest, who received the inaugural award in 2013; Emmy-winning screenwriter and actor Danny Strong, the 2014 winner; and last year’s honoree, Lisa Genova, the best-selling author of “Still Alice” and three other novels.

“I am deeply honored to be receiving the 2016 Pell Center Prize for my work as a journalist,” Manzano said. “Be it a local or international investigative story, a feature or in my case documentary films and photography, we all strive to bring to the public human stories that spark or further important conversations or remind us that certain truths need not be forgotten.”

Manzano’s work can be viewed on his website at www.javiermanzano.com.

A native of Mexico, Manzano holds a bachelor’s degree in international business from Loras College and a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism and documentary film production from the Brooks Institute of Photography. After internships at several American newspapers, he was hired by the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. When it folded in 2009, Manzano began his independent career. He is currently based in the Middle East.

Manzano won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his photo, distributed through Agence France-Presse, of Syrian rebel soldiers guarding their position as light streams through bullet holes in a wall. Among his 12 other awards are two World Press Photo Awards and the 2013 Bayeux-Calvados Award for war correspondents.

Manzano will speak, present some of his work, and receive the Pell Center Prize in a ceremony at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 21. While in Rhode Island, he will also be interviewed for an episode of “Story in the Public Square,” a new monthly feature of the national PBS show “White House Chronicle.”

Founded in 2012, Story in the Public Square is an initiative to celebrate, study and tell stories that matter. A partnership of the Pell Center and The Providence Journal, the program sponsors public seminars and discussions, annually names a local and national story of the year, and is guided by a culturally and creatively diverse Story Board.