Family of a missing Haitian journalist win Kamran Memorial Award

Art and Literature 02:45 PM - 2022-06-13

A journalist from Haiti won the Kamaran Memorial Award at the Kamaran Awards 2022 which took place on Sunday in the city of Slemani.

The Kamran Award consists of two awards: $12,000 for a journalist, foreign or local, to support a long-term coverage project, and the Kamran Memorial Award which will be given to the family of a photographer who went missing during coverage.

The family of the Haitian photographer and journalist Vladjimir Legagneur won the Kamaran Memorial Award, while the second prize went to the Kashmiri photographer, Qadhi Shibilly.

Freelance photojournalist Vladjimir Legagneur was last seen by his wife, Fleurette Guerrier, on the morning of March 14, 2018, when he left their home in the capital of Port-au-Prince for another neighborhood in the capital, Grand-Ravine, Guerrier told CPJ.

According to Pierre Michel Jean, Legagneur’s colleague and a member of the Haitian photojournalist organization Kolektif 2 Dimansyon (K2D), Legagneur was working on an independent project in Grand-Ravine, an area known for its high rates of violent gang activity.

Haitian journalist, Vladjimir Legagneur

The jury of the Kamaran Awards 2022 was composed of both Kurdish and foreign journalists and photographers.

The Kamran Awards 2022 was held for the first time this year, but the project founder, which is Metrography Agency, will hold it annually for all photographers, videographers, and journalists who want to innovate and serve in their profession. 

The ceremony coincided with the eighth anniversary of the disappearance of Kamaran Najm, the photographer and founder of the Metrography Agency, who was wounded and Kidnapped by ISIS on June 12, 2014, while he was covering a battle between Peshmerga forces and ISIS terrorists in the Mala Abdullah area west of Kirkuk city and he has not been found since then.

Kamaran Najm, a photojournalist and founder of the Metrography Agency, was born in Kirkuk in 1987 and has been working as a journalist and photographer since 2003.
 
Kamaran has worked for international news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press. He also worked for the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and The Times of London, and has won several awards, such as the World Press Photo and the MENA Masterclass of the Middle East and Africa.



Reported by Vinos Tofiq
PUKmedia