Sanna Irshad Mattoo, a 28-year-old woman photojournalist from Srinagar, has won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. She is among the four Reuters photojournalists who have won the prestigious award — Adnan Abidi, Amit Dave and the late Danish Sidiqqui being the other three — for their coverage of the devastating second wave of Covid-19 in India.
“It is huge (for me). It is a proud moment for us,” Mattoo told The Indian Express. Siddiqui was killed in Afghanistan last July while covering the clashes between Afghan forces and the Taliban.
Mattoo completed her masters in convergent journalism from the Central University of Kashmir. In 2021, she became the Magnum Foundation’s ‘photography and social justice fellow’.
Mattoo has extensively covered Kashmir over the last six years and her photos have been published in various national and international media outlets like Al Jazeera, Time and Caravan. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has congratulated Mattoo on her achievement.
The award for Mattoo comes two years after three Jammu and Kashmir photojournalists won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020. Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand of the Associated Press (AP) won the 2020 award in feature photography for their coverage of the crackdown in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of the state’s special status.