MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino photojournalist makes it to the finals of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
Seasoned photographer Ezra Acayan's coverage for Getty Images on the COVID-19 pandemic earned him a finalist place at the Feature Photography category.
"Woke up today to incredible news and to one of the biggest honors of my life and my career. I've been nominated as one of the finalists for the @PulitzerPrizes in Feature Photography with a picture I took last year of the chaos hours before Manila was placed on lockdown," Acayan wrote on June 12 on Twitter and Instagram.
The Feature Photography winner for this year is Emilio Morenatti of Associated Press "for a poignant series of photographs that takes viewers into the lives of the elderly in Spain struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic."
Prior to this, Acayan was awarded a special merit at the Human Rights Press Awards for multimedia reporting on the drug war together with a team of Reuters journalists in 2017. He received a World Press Photo Award in the Spot News category in 2019. This particular work has been exhibited in Geneva for two straight years as part of the Universal Periodic Review of the Philippines at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Acayan, a two-time World Press Photo award recipient, is the current chairperson of the Photojournalists' Center of the Philippines.