John Wessels
Photojournalist
Born in Johannesburg, he began his career as a photojournalist in 2014 while working as a topographic engineer in Maputo, Mozambique. In 2016, he started working with AFP and other media outlets in southern Africa as a freelance journalist. Since 2017, he has been based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where he works on a regular basis for AFP and several NGOs. In 2018 he was invited to exhibit his work on DRC at Visa pour l’Image and, in 2019, received two World Press Photo awards for it. Moreover, he won second place as photographer of the year in the 2018 Picture of The Year International (POYI) and was named Best Photographer 2018 by The Guardian.
Update: 3 November 2021