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

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

. 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 holds the annual World Press Photo Contest for press photography. Since 2011, World Press Photo has orga ...

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 in 2006. He 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 Swansea ( ; ) is a coastal City status in the United Kingdom, city and the List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, second-largest city of Wales. It forms a Principal areas of Wales, principal area, officially known as the City and County of ...

in South Wales and raised in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, 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 List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

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

Vancouver College Vancouver College (abbreviated informally to VC) is an independent K-12 university-preparatory Catholic school for boys located in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Founded in 1922, it is the only independent ...

Life and work

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

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'' 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 and the flagship publication of the American-owned Postmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.

''. He joined

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

as a freelance correspondent based in

Kinshasa Kinshasa (; ; ), formerly named Léopoldville from 1881–1966 (), is the Capital city, capital and Cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kinshasa is one of the world's fastest-grow ...

, Congo in 2001 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 (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

. In the same year he co-directed the documentary, ''The Digital Divide'' about technology in the developing world. From 2003 to 2005 he was the Reuters

African Great Lakes The African Great Lakes (; ) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. The series includes Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world by area; Lake Tangan ...

correspondent in

Kigali Kigali () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali is a relativ ...

, Rwanda. He turned to photography in 2005 and from 2005 until 2012 was the Reuters Chief Photographer for West and Central Africa, based in

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The Departments of Senegal, department of Dakar has a population of 1,278,469, and the population of the Dakar metropolitan area was at 4.0 mill ...

, Senegal. In 2012 he took a sabbatical year off to study psychology as a

Nieman Fellow The Nieman Fellowship is a fellowship from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. It awards multiple types of fellowships. Nieman Fellowships for journalists The Nieman Fellowship is an award given to journalists by the Nieman ...

at Harvard with a focus on conflict-induced trauma. Upon returning to Reuters, he was posted to

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

as a Senior Photographer for Israel and the Palestinian Territories. He covered the 2014 Gaza War from inside the Strip before leaving Reuters in 2015. O'Reilly is one of several journalists included in ''Under Fire: The Psychological Cost of Covering War'', a documentary which won a 2013 Peabody Award. shortlisted for a 2012 Academy Award. In 2014, he was an Ochberg Fellow at the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma at

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism scho ...

in New York, in 2015 a

Yale World Fellows Yale World Fellows is an international fellowship program at Yale University for rising global leaders. World Fellows come from around the world and from diverse disciplines. They are selected through a competitive application process. Each year ...

and in 2016 a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a writer in residence at the Carey Institute for Global Good. ''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 annual World Press Photo contest. The color image shows the emaciated fingers of a one-year-old child pressed against the lips of his mother at an emergency feeding clinic in

Niger Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state Geography of Niger#Political geography, bordered by Libya to the Libya–Niger border, north-east, Chad to the Chad–Niger border, east ...

. *2019

First Place prize in the Portraits category

References

External links

*
"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 men's basketball players Welsh emigrants to Ireland Irish emigrants to Canada Canadian people of Welsh descent 21st-century Welsh photographers Vancouver College alumni