Samuel Aranda

After starting to work at the age of 19 as a photojournalist with the newspapers El País and El Periódico de Catalunya, he covered the conflict between Israel and Palestine for Agencia EFE when he was 21. In 2004, he started to work for Agence France-Presse (AFP) for whom he photographed conflicts in Spain, Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, the Palestine territories, Morocco, Western Sahara, and China. In 2006, his work on emigrants from Africa who were trying to enter Europe received the National Photography Award. The same year, he started working again as a freelance journalist with projects on the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, social issues in India, Kosovo independence, the conflict in Colombia, the Moldova and Transnistria dispute, street children in Bucharest, and the Camorra in Naples. In 2011, he started his coverage of the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. This work was exhibited in the Instituto Cervantes, New York and was selected for The New York Times “photos of the year”. He received the 2012 World Press Photo of the Year Award for an image of the revolution in Yemen, and the 2016 Ortega y Gasset Prize. He has also received a BBVA grant for his project “Cerca del Nilo" (Near the Nile), which aims to document the Nile from Alexandria to the border of Sudan. In 2020 he was commissioned by the Vila Casas Foundation to produce their project “Territorio”. He is presently working freelance, basically for The New York Times. He is a member of the London-based Panos agency.