Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist to receive Pell Center prize in June

JAVIER MANZANO, a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer and documentary filmmaker, has been named the 2016 winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. / COURTESY PELL CENTER
JAVIER MANZANO, a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer and documentary filmmaker, has been named the 2016 winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. / COURTESY PELL CENTER

NEWPORT – Javier Manzano, a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer and documentary filmmaker, has been named the 2016 winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square.
He is the fourth winner from Salve Regina University’s Pell Center; the prize recognizes a storyteller whose work has significantly influenced the public dialogue. Manzano’s work has brought him to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Nigeria, among many other places.
Manzano, 40, who is based in the Middle East, said he is honored to receive the prize for his work.
“Be it a local or international investigative story, a feature or in my case documentary films and photography, we all strive to bring to the public human stories that spark or further important conversations or remind us that certain truths need not be forgotten,” Manzano said in a statement.
“We often believe that events such as conflict or man-made human disasters happen to ‘others in faraway places’ and do not have an impact on our far-removed lives across the world. They do. Policy can be changed. Man-made disasters can be averted. Individuals living in democratic countries have a say in the foreign policy of their own nations. I am thrilled that Story in the Public Square recognizes this type of storytelling,” he added.
Pell Center Executive Director Jim Ludes said Manazano “alternately enlightens, amazes, disturbs – and always prompts deeper thought and discussion about resolving some of the planet’s most pressing problems.”
Manzano’s work can be viewed on his web site www.javiermanzano.com.
A native of Mexico, Manzano holds a bachelor’s degree in international business from Loras College in Iowa and a bachelor’s in photojournalism and documentary film production from California’s Brooks Institute of Photography.
Until it closed in 2009, Manzano worked at Rocky Mountain News in Denver. That’s when Manzano began his independent career.
His photo of Syrian rebel soldiers guarding their position as light streams through bullet holes in a wall won Manzano the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
Manzano will speak, present some of his work, and receive the Pell Center Prize in a ceremony at 7 p.m., June 21, at the Pell Center.
Founded in 2012, Story in the Public Square, an initiative to celebrate, study and tell stories that matter, is a partnership of the Pell Center and The Providence Journal.

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