Finbarr O'Reilly (born 1971) is a Welsh-born Irish/CanadianFinbarr O’Reilly
Reportage Atri Festival. Retrieved on 31 December 2010 independent

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographers As in other ...

. He is a regular contributor to ''The New York Times''. O'Reilly won the 2019

World Press Photo World Press Photo Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Founded in 1955, the organization is known for holding an annual press photography contest. Since 2011, World Press Photo has organized a ...

First Place prize in the Portraits category, and also won the

World Press Photo of the Year The World Press Photo of the Year award is part of the World Press Photo Awards, organized by the Dutch foundation World Press Photo. Considered one of the most prestigious and coveted awards in photojournalism, The World Press Photo of the Ye ...

award of the 49th annual World Press Photo contest in 2006. O'Reilly is co-author of the joint memoir with U.S. Marine Sgt. Thomas James Brennan, ''Shooting Ghosts'' (2017).

Early life and education

O'Reilly was born in Swansea in South Wales and raised in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

, Ireland until he moved with his family to

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. The ...

, Canada at the age of nine. He attended high school at

Vancouver College Vancouver College (abbreviated informally to VC) is an independent university-preparatory Catholic school for boys located in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1922, it is the only independent Catho ...

Life and work

After high school he became a Toronto-based arts correspondent for ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' and then spent three years writing pop culture and entertainment pieces for the ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...

''. He joined

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was esta ...

as a freelance correspondent based in Kinshasa, Congo in 2001 before moving to Kigali, Rwanda, where he became the Reuters Africa Great Lakes correspondent from 2003 to 2005. In 2003 he co-produced ''The Ghosts of Lomako'', a documentary about conservation in the

Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. In the same year he co-directed the documentary, ''The Digital Divide'' about technology in the developing world. He turned to photography in 2005 and became the Reuters Chief Photographer for West and Central Africa, based in Dakar, Senegal from 2005 until 2012, when he took a sabbatical year off to study psychology as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. A color image by O'Reilly won

2005. The picture shows the emaciated fingers of a one-year-old child pressed against the lips of his mother at an emergency feeding clinic in

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesCarey Institute for Global Good The Carey Institute for Global Good is an independent American nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a "better world by contributing to a strong, educated, and just society." Through its programs in nonfiction, sustainable communities, ...

, also in 2016. He covered the 2014 Gaza War from inside the Strip before leaving Reuters in 2015 to write ''Shooting Ghosts''. ''Shooting Ghosts'' (2017) is a joint memoir with Sgt. Thomas James Brennan, a U.S. Marine who he had met during one of his assignments in Afghanistan. Their unlikely friendship helped heal them after war.

Awards

*2006:

2005 award of the 49th annual World Press Photo contest *2019

First Place prize in the Portraits category

References

External links

O'Reilly's Website"Fighting photographic cliches: Finbarr O'Reilly and gold in the Congo"
''The Telegraph'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Oreilly, Finbarr Canadian photographers Canadian photojournalists Living people 1971 births People from Swansea UBC Thunderbirds basketball players University of British Columbia alumni Welsh emigrants to Ireland Irish emigrants to Canada Canadian people of Welsh descent Welsh photographers