Rodrigo Abd

Rodrigo Abd is a Pulitzer Prize winning Argentine photojournalist for the Associated Press (AP). He was part of a team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for its coverage of the Syrian Civil War.

Biography & Career

Abd was born in Buenos Aires on October 27, 1976. Abd began his career for several newspapers (La Razon and La Nacion) as a staff photographer from 1999 to 2003. In 2003 Abd began working for the Associated Press based in Guatemala (the only exception being his operation in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2006) as a staff photographer. Since then he has continued his work under the Associated Press on multiple special assignments and is currently living in Lima, Peru. As a staff photographer Abd has been praised for his passion documenting subjects that photographers may shy away from. Most of Abd's work in Guatemala depicted hospital wards, violent crime scenes, and uprooted graves. Abd is known for his keen photographer's eye and his focus on the interrelation of social struggles; the cause and effect empower his works. And his peers were selected for the award because of their depictions of the dismantled neighborhoods and strong focus on the conflict's effect on families and youth. The photographers were also commended for going so far and risking their lives without permission or protection from the Syrian government in the midst of a war zone. for his "Cemetery Dues" covering the lack of grave space in Guatemala City, leaving many carcasses displaced. The judges commended Abd for finding beautiful images in situations with little beauty, and went on to praise AP photographers as a whole for being "courageous in their storytelling process to bring the images back to places where people don't live in fear."

In 2023, for the coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he won another Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography as part of the AP team (shared with Bernat Armangue, Evgeniy Maloletka, Felipe Dana, Nariman El-Mofty, Emilio Morenatti, and Vadim Ghirda).