Jury 2010

Jan Šibík

PHOTO-EDITOR, REFLEX MAGAZINE (CZECH REPUBLIC)

Since 1985 Jan Šibík has traveled over 200 times to every corner of the world.  He has documented the collapse of communism, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the bloody end of the Ceausescu regime in Romania.  He has witnessed massacres in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as famine in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.  He also experienced the aftermath of earthquakes in Armenia and Turkey, as well as the exodus of Iraqi Kurds to Iran.

Šibík has also photographed wars in Afghanistan, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Abkhazia (Georgia), Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), South Africa and Iraq.  He also documented the genocide in Rwanda, as well as refugee camps in Tanzania, Sudan, Angola, Somalia and Haiti. His work has also brought him to Cuba on numerous occasions.

More recently Šibík has devoted time to covering the conflict in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  During all of 2004 he documented the AIDS epidemic in Ukraine.  In 2005 he recorded the horrific consequences of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, the tragic and bizarre situation in communist North Korea, the funerals of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican and Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the forced departure of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip, and the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

In 2004 Jan Šibík’s photos of Indian kushti wrestlers took third place in the sports action category of the World Press Photo competition.  In the Czech Press Photo competition, designated for Czech and Slovak photographers, he has won a total of forty awards in numerous categories, including the main prize for photo of the year. Šibík has also won three awards in the Fuji Press Photographer competition, including the top prize in 1997.  He is also a recipient of the June 1st Prize granted by the City of Pilsen for outstanding support of democracy and human rights.

In 2000 Šibík organized a humanitarian campaign entitled “Podejte ruce dětem ze Siery Leone” (“Give the Children of Sierra Leone a Hand”), which managed to raise 1.1 mln Czech crowns for child victims of war and civil conflict. In 2005 he established a similar charity called “Chci ještě žít!” (“I Want to Live!”) in support of AIDS victims in Odessa, Ukraine.  The campaign raised 900,000 crowns.