Sergey Ponomarev

Sergey Igorevich Ponomarev (, 11 December 1980) is a Russian photographer.

In 2016 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for coverage of the European migrant crisis. In 2017, he was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal (shared with Bryan Denton) for his coverage of the war in Iraq. He won World Press Photo awards in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Life and work Ponomarev was born in Moscow and graduated from Moscow State University and from Academy of Labour and Social Relations. Between 2003 and 2012, Ponomarev worked for Associated Press, subsequently starting his career as a freelance photographer.

He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. In 2015, The New York Times asked Ponomarev to go to Greece and photograph the landing of refugees. Subsequently, he followed refugees on their way to Western Europe, spending in total of five months on the project.

Ponomarev previously covered the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002, the Beslan school siege in 2004, the Euromaidan in Kyiv, the war in Donbas, and the Syrian Civil War.

Awards 2015: A double runner-up for a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography as a contributor to two of the three finalist portfolios, both for The New York Times. With Mauricio Lima, he was cited "for photographs that portrayed the conflict in Ukraine in an intimate way," specifically the Euromaidan protests and ensuing war, and for "capturing key moments in the human struggle in Gaza, and providing a fresh take on a long, bloody conflict." 2015: third prize of the World Press Photo award in the General News category for his photos of Gaza conflict. He became the second Pulitzer Prize winner from Russia, after Alexander Zemlianichenko (1997). 2017: Robert Capa Gold Medal (shared with Bryan Denton) for his coverage of the war in Iraq. 2017: Second prize stories, General News category, World Press Photo.