Finbarr O’Reilly

Finbarr is the 2020 Laureate of the Prix Carmignac and the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize exhibition photographer. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times. He won the First Place Portraits category at the 2019 World Press Photo Awards for his photograph of Senegalese fashion, and earned the premier World Press Photo of the Year in 2006 for his image of a mother and child in Niger. Finbarr O’Reilly is the co-author of Shooting Ghosts A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer, and Their Journey Back from War (2017, Penguin Random House), a unique joint memoir written with U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Thomas Brennan and based on their experiences under fire together in Afghanistan. (Order book here: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, BAM, iBooks)

While still working regularly for The New York Times, most recently covering the spread of Islamic extremism in the Sahel, Ebola in Congo, and criminal networks in Madagascar’s vanilla trade, Finbarr’s efforts have focused in recent years on leading collaborative projects that develop and promote a more representative range of voices and perspectives, particularly from African visual journalists.

For his Nobel Peace Prize commission, Finbarr chose to collaborate with seven Ethiopian photographers, including three women, to create a joint exhibition around the Laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The resulting show, Crossroads Ethiopia, was co-curated by Addis FotoFest founder Aida Muluneh, the first black woman to co-curate a Nobel exhibition.

As the 2020 Laureate of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, he created a new digital project, Congo In Conversation, featuring photo, video and written reports from a network of Congolese journalists covering their country as it contends with the worst pandemic in a century, the second-deadliest Ebola epidemic in history, and the world’s worst measles outbreak. Their multi-platform stories on health, security, decolonization, and racial justice—more than half of them produced by women—explore global themes from local perspectives. These are promoted across social media, via mainstream media partners and will be featured in a high-profile exhibition in France in the summer of 2020.

In 2019, Finbarr was the field producer for the PBS Frontline documentary Ebola in Congo, which profiles a female Haitian WHO doctor and two Congolese health workers all risking their lives to battle Ebola in a war zone.

Finbarr was a 2013 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a 2014 Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University, a 2015 Yale World Fellow. He was also a 2016 writer in residence at the MacDowell Colony and at the Carey Institute for Global Good.

Finbarr was a Reuters senior photographer for Israel and the Palestinian Territories based in Tel Aviv and covered the 2014 Gaza war from inside the Strip. From 2005-2014 he was the Reuters Regional Chief Photographer for West and Central Africa, traveling widely across the continent and managing a network of staff.

His multimedia work and photography has earned numerous top industry awards. His solo exhibition “Congo On The Wire” has shown in France and Canada, and at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights.

His series on white poverty in South Africa was included
in the exhibition “After A” in Italy in 2010.

Finbarr is among those profiled in the film Under Fire: Journalists in Combat. The film was shortlisted for an Oscar at the 2012 Academy Awards and won a 2013 Peabody Award.