In our second year, members of Istanbul Photo Awards 2016 met in Istanbul. You can find their biographies below.

DANIEL BEREHULAK

Daniel Berehulak is the winner of the Photo of the Year 2015. He is a native of Sydney, Australia. He has visited over 50 countries covering historic events, including the Iraq war, the trial of Saddam Hussein, child labor issues in India, Afghanistan elections, the return of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan, the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in Japan and the Chernobyl disaster.

Born to immigrant parents, he grew up on a farm outside of Sydney. At an early age, he worked on a farm and at his father’s refrigeration company. After graduating from university, his career as a photographer started humbly: he shot sports matches for a man who ran his business from his garage. In 2002, he started freelancing with Getty Images in Sydney, shooting mainly sports-related pictures.

From 2005 to 2009, he was based in London as a staff news photographer with Getty Images. He then shifted to New Delhi to advance Getty’s coverage of the subcontinent with a focus on the social and political instability of Pakistan and its neighbors.

In July 2013, he joined Reportage by Getty Images as a key represented photographer, to focus on a combination of long-term personal projects, breaking news and client assignments.

He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, TIME Magazine and Der Spiegel in particular and his work appears internationally in newspapers and magazines worldwide.

LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT

Laurent Van der Stockt, photojournalist, is a French national, born in Belgium in 1964. He bases himself in Paris.

Having previously exposed the living conditions of the Romanian people; Laurent returned to document the country after Ceausescu's fall in 1989.

He has concentrated on photographing areas of conflict throughout his career including; former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Gulf of Kuwait and Iraq.

Laurent Van Der Stockt has often found himself in the line of fire during the course of his work, often finding himself injured as a result. Having been injured by a shell in Vukovar in 1991, he was again hit in Ramallah in 2001 and had his arm seriously damaged in Fallujah in 2005.

Laurent has been awarded several prizes for his work, including the Award of Excellence - Journalism Prize from the Columbia University in 1991, the Paris Match Prize in 1996, the Bayeux Prize for war correspondents in 1995 and the Festival Prize for the Scoop d’Angers, which he won four times between 1991 and 1996. The Visa d’or in Perpignan, France, 2013, when the report he made in Syria for Le Monde with Jean-Phillippe Rémy established the proof of the use of the chemical weapons by the Bachar Al-Assad regime.

His work has been published in magazines all over the world including: The New York Times, Newsweek, The Independent, Stern, El Paìs, Paris-Match and many others, has been presented in many exhibitions.

NICOLAS JIMENEZ

Nicolas Jimenez is the director of photography of the French daily newspaper Le Monde. From 1999 to 2004 he worked, during his European studies at the University, with Jean-François Leroy for the photojournalism festival Visa pour l'Image.

In 2005, when Le Monde decided to become an image producer, he became national photo editor. In 2008, he became the head of the photo department. Le Monde is now one of the three biggest photojournalism producer in French speaking press.

JAMES WELLFORD

James Wellford is a photography editor, producer, curator, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently the Editorial Director of Visura. (Visura.co) His collaborative work with photographers has received top honors at the Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, POYi, American Photo, Visa Pour L’image, PX 3, and NPPA. He curates photography and multimedia shows that address topical issues in the world including most recently; “American Photography” for the Photographic Museum of Humanity. Winter 2015, “Remembering Liberia”. Photoville 2013. Brooklyn, NY. “Iraq 10 Years”. by Franco Pagetti. VII Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. 2013. “Dispatch from Tohoku: Documenting the Aftermath in Japan” New York, NY. 2012. “Generation 9/11, Ten Years of War Photography after 9/11” The Hague, Netherlands. 2011. “Projections of Reality: Encounters with the (Un)Familiar” Moscow, Russia. 2010.

James has served as a jury member for the Magnum Emergency Fund, the Tim Hetherington Trust Award, the PhotoPhilanthropy Awards, Visa Pour L’image, POYi, the Aperture Paris PhotoBook Award, and the Overseas Press Club and was a member of the 2012 World Press Masterclass in Amsterdam. He is also on the advisory board of the Photobook Museum and the organization Social Documentary Network (SocialDocumentary.net) and is the co-founder of two groups ScreenProjects (http://www.screenprojects.org) and SeenUnseen that are working on ways to create, support, and deliver powerful visual and narrative stories around the world. For 12 years he was the International Photo Editor at Newsweek Magazine and is a Knight Wallace Fellow from the University of Michigan and a contributing photo editor to Smithsonian Journeys, Foreign Policy, and CNN.

GUILLAUME HERBAUT

Guillaume Herbaut, Photographer INSTITUTE, born in 1970, has dedicated himself for some years now to historical places, filled with symbols and memory. His work called Tchernobylsty, Kodak Critics Prize in 2001, was published in October 2003, also winning the Fuji Book Prize the following year.

After Oswiecim, a documentary work on Auschwitz nowadays-exposed at the Lille’s Transphotographiques festival in spring 2005- he concentrates on Skhodra, a small town in northern Albania where secluded families still suffer from vendetta.

Visa pour l’Image exposed his work in September 2004. He won a grant fro 3P for a project on Nagasaki. Prize-winner of the Lucien Hervé Prize in 2004, he carries on with the aim of revealing unseen tragedies.

His works has been exposed at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris in 2005, at “la Maison Rouge” and Foto España in 2007, at the Silverstein gallery (NY) in 2008. In 2009 and 2012, Herbaut won a prize at World Press Photo.

In 2011, he won the Niepce Prize for his work on Chernobyl, and the France24/ RFI award for la Zone web documentary.

GEORGES DE KEERLE

Georges De Keerle is the senior Director for Entertainment and Partnerships of EMEA since 2002. Keerle worked as a photojournalist for SIPA Press in France between 1978-1982 and Angeli in UK between 1982-1984. He worked as bureau chief for Gamma in UK between 1984-1991 and Sygma in Russia between 1991-1997. He worked as liaison correspondent at White House in USA from 1997 to 1999. He also worked as Newsmakers partner in USA between the years of 1997 and 1999 and Director of Photography for News and Entertainment in USA between 1999-2002.

LIU HEUNG SHING

Liu Heung Shing, Photojournalist founder of Shanghai Center of Photography (SCOP), was born 1951 in Hong Kong. He graduated from Hunter College, City University of New York in 1975. He currently lives and works in Beijing and he is the founder of Shanghai Center of Photography (SCOP).

From 1997 to 2005, Liu served first as the China Representative of TimeWarner, then and Executive Vice President of News Corp (China) owned by Rupert Murdoch. From 2005-2007, he served as senior advisor to News Corp in China.

Liu, who apprenticed with Life Magazine photographer Gjon Mili, was the first accredited photographer for Time Magazine in China in 1979. He then joined the Associated Press as foreign correspondent photojournalist based in Beijing (1980-1983), followed by postings in Los Angeles (1984-1985), New Delhi, (1985-1988) Seoul, (1989-1990) and Moscow (1991-1994)

In 1992, Liu received the Overseas Press Club Award and shared the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News for his coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1989, Liu’s defining photograph of the Tiananmen Turmoil was awarded Picture of the Year by School of Journalism at University of Missouri. In 2004, Liu was named by ParisPhoto as one of the hundred most influential photographers in the world. Liu has been named twice as Photographer of the Year (1989,1991) by Associated Press Managing Editors.

MICHEL SCOTTO

Michel Scotto, 60, is Director of Photo Business Development at Agence France-Presse.

He started as a freelancer in the mid-70s before joining the Associated Press in 1979 in Paris. He then moved to Agence France-Presse in 1983 and took part in the launching of its international photo service late 1984. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 he took the position of Editor-in-chief in charge of Europe, Africa and Middle East until 1994 when he moved to Hong Kong as Photo Manager for Asia-Pacific. In 2000 back to Paris he was asked to look for new development opportunities through content partnerships and distribution which were made possible with the Internet. AFP online photo database ImageForum makes now available content from more than 50 Agencies to media and non-media clients in some 150 countries.

AHMET SEL

Ahmet Sel, Visual News Editor in Chief, Anadolu Agency. Former cameraman and photo-reporter Sel had settled in France in 1981, and then lived in Russia between 1990 and 2000, where he was a correspondent and bureau chief for Sipa Press. In 2005-2006, Ahmet Sel worked as the Editor in Chief for Sipa Press in Paris. He won the "Fujifilm Press Photo Award France" in the portrait category, in 2003, and the Gold Award of National Magazine Awards Foundation (Canada) in the "Words & Pictures" category, in 2004.

FIRAT ÇAĞLAYAN YURDAKUL

Firat Caglayan Yurdakul, photo editor, Anadolu Agency. He is graduated from Hacettepe University, department of History. He started to work as photo journalist in 1997, in Turkey. He has been working at Anadolu Agency since 2001 and he is the photo editor since 2011.

He worked as photo journalist in Indonesia, Banda Aceh, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. He received many awards in news photo category including Zoom in-on Poverty award 2011, that was organized in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Xinhua News Agency.