News

The Anglo-American journalist Clarissa Ward has accepted the invitation from the Prix Bayeux-Calvados-Normandie for War Correspondents: next October the CNN star journalist will don the mantle of President of the international jury for the 31st edition of the event. At the age of 44, it is an“honour”and a “big responsibility” for one of the youngest Presidents in the history of the Prix Bayeux.

Meteoric rise

Having begun as an assistant on the night-time edition of Fox News, Clarissa quickly moved to ABC and then CBS News. Working for these major American networks she was based first in Moscow, Beijing and then London and travelled to many war zones. Among them Syria provided the opportunity for her earliest coup and first international recognition: while there she did an interview with two Western fighters who had gone there to wage jihad, and became the only Western journalist to have interviewed an American jihadi.  In 2015 she joined CNN and three years later succeeded Christiane Amanpour as Chief International Correspondent. In 2021 she was in Afghanistan when the Taliban regained power. In 2022 she covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each time her reports on families in distress struck a chord with public opinion. Driven by “a fundamental curiosity about human nature” Clarissa Ward continued to pursue the mission she had set for herself more than twenty years earlier: “to shine a light on the experience of ordinary civilians living through extraordinary moments”.

Sensitivity

And Clarissa encountered many ordinary citizens. Very many. Enormous numbers of them. So many that she decided to write a book about them. On All Fronts: the Education of a Journalist, published in 2020, enabled her to share the “kindness, courage, resilience, altruism, bravery: you see extraordinary moments of kindness and selflessness that don’t generally make the front page of the papers, but need to be told”. Clarissa describes the book as a “memoir” that she also wrote for her children. As the mother of three young boys – “a second full-time job!” – the journalist firmly believes that her work will contribute to making her children “better citizens, better humans, open to the world and the way it works”. She explains that they in turn “have made her a better journalist, with a lot more compassion, viewing stories in a different way”. Having seen the worst of what humanity is capable of, she retains a degree of optimism. “I’ve seen the worst of humanity but also the best.”

A new role

Accustomed to ”going where the news takes her” Clarissa Ward will make an exception next October to spend a few days in Bayeux. A unique time and space that she sees as “the opportunity to immerse myself in some of the best journalism out there”. She feels honoured to take part in the deliberations for “one of the most prestigious and well-respected awards for conflict journalism” and is aware of her responsibilities: “Moderating the conversations around how we judge journalism, deconstructing stories, is a challenging process. What are the parameters for judging what is the best journalism? Is it about bravery? Is it about the story-telling? Is it about newsworthiness? Is it about impact? It’s not often that we have the opportunity to dig deep into what constitutes great journalism. I’m sure there’ll be some interesting debates: journalists love to debate!”

Following on from Christiane Amanpour

In addition to their origins (both were born in London) and their positions at CNN, Clarissa Ward and Christiane Amanpour will soon have another thing in common: having been President of the jury at the Prix Bayeux. In 2018 this small town in Calvados welcomed the American news channel’s star of current affairs.  In 2024 it will do so again with Clarissa Ward.

Clarissa Ward – Some dates

1980 — Born in London
2002 — Graduated Yale University with BA in comparative literature
2002 — CNN Moscow internship
2003 — FOX News Overnight Assignment Desk
2005 — Moved to Beirut and started working as a freelance producer in Baghdad / Beirut / Middle East
2007 — ABC News Moscow Correspondent
2009 — ABC News Beijing Correspondent
2011 — CBS News Correspondent based out of London, mostly covering the Syrian civil war
2011 — Peabody Award for her undercover work during the Syrian uprising
2013 — DuPont Columbia Award for her work in Syria for CBS News
2015 — Murrow Award for International Reporting, Washington State University
2015 — Joined CNN
2016 — Peabody Award for the CNN reports: ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Undercover in Syria, Battle for Mosul
2016 — David Kaplan Award for Undercover in Syria
2016 — Excellence in International Reporting Award from the International Center for Journalists
2018 — Appointed CNN Chief International Correspondent
2019 — Reporter of the year for Alliance of Women in Media (AWM)
2020 — “On All Fronts: the Education of a Journalist” is published
2020 — DuPont Award with Nic Robertson for CNN’s reporting on the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi
2023 — Emmy and DuPont Awards for Ukraine coverage

More than forty war correspondents have gathered in Bayeux on October 13^th and 14^th to debate and award trophies in the following categories: photo, print, radio, television, grand format television, young reporter (print) and video image. Three honorary awards have been attributed: the Regional prize for students and trainees of Normandy (television), the Public’s Choice award (photo) and the Ouest-France – Jean Marin prize (print). Presided by Don McCullin, the international jury of the 30^th edition of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents has reached its verdict…

“It has been a great honor and a great experience to be here. We had two captivating days. Really stressfull on the first – especially on Saturday morning for me with the Photo Category – but captivating. Debates were quite interesting but difficult at the same time. It was not easy to decide the winners but every member of the jury was a generous and kind judge. The losers must not feel sad and the winners deserved what they got.”
Don McCullin

For its 30^th edition the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents is preparing to welcome one of the greatest names in photojournalism: British photojournalist Don (Donald) McCullin has accepted the invitation and agreed to take on the role of President of the International jury. Renowned for his black and white photos, he intends to make full use of his visit to Bayeux to spend time exchanging with his colleagues on his vision of the profession and the future of the news media. 

“When I started to photograph war, I already knew about violence”

At the end of his military service in the Royal Air Force, during which he discovered both travel and photography, Don McCullin’s life took a major turn. Returning to London armed with a camera he immortalised his childhood friends, the Guv’nors gang, for posterity. The Observer newspaper published one of his photos to illustrate a crime story: this marked the start of his career. He quickly began to win major awards for his current affairs photography. In 1961 his report on the construction of the Berlin Wall received a British Press Award; in 1964 his coverage of the civil war in Cyprus was recognised by the distinguished World Press Photo award. In 1966 he signed an exclusive contract with The Sunday Times magazine, with which he would stay until 1984.  During this period he covered every conflict of the time – Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Israel, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Chad, El Salvador, Iran, Uganda…. He also documented the famines in Bihar (India) and Biafra (Nigeria). His forays to the hearts of the world’s trouble spots didn’t leave him unscathed: he received a punctured eardrum, bullet wounds and fractures as well as imprisonment, expulsions and threats. The photographer admits as much:  “I paid in pain in many ways, and I’m lucky to be alive. But I couldn’t stop, I could have but there was something addictive about war. All those years I spent photographing war I thought I was doing something that was useful to our society, to explain what was going on in other places. What I was doing wasn’t personal: I was trying to show people the futility of war.”

“I was trying to show people the futility of war.”

Alongside his reports from overseas, Don McCullin continued to capture the deprivation ravaging his own country – deprived children in Bradford, down-and-outs in London, the working class of England’s industrial towns… “I’ve photographed a lot of poverty in England: there are 2 million people still living almost like dogs in this country. People don’t realise that.” His photographs of England in the 1970s were published in two books, Homecoming in 1979 and Hearts of Darkness in 1980. The latter, a retrospective of the first part of his career, would be the subject of an exhibition at the prestigious Victoria & Albert Museum in London in the year of its publication, and in New York the following year. It would be the start of a lengthy series of exhibitions around the world.  The decade that followed saw another turning point in Don McCullin’s career: although he continued to cover war and its impacts on populations, his drive to tell human stories began to be complemented in his fifties by a passion for landscapes. It was both a passion and a form of therapy.   “When you’ve spent so many years like me looking at war there’s no way you can ever chase away the images from your memory: there’s no treatment. Photographing landscapes helped me, I had to do something different. Instead of going to a psychiatrist I became my own psychiatrist by using my photographic knowledge. Half my memory now is war, and the other half is peace.”  After immortalising all that was worst in the world, Don McCullin would now capture the beauty it has to offer. “I don’t want to be remembered just as a war photographer of dead bodies and war and pain because I’ve also photographed the most beautiful things: I photographed flowers, landscapes, ethnic minority people in jungles. I’ve been all over the world photographing all kinds of things that are not war.” All over the world, certainly, but above all close to home, in the English countryside of Somerset.

“I don’t want to be remembered just as a war photographer, because I’ve also photographed the most beautiful things”

Since he’s no longer physically able to “climb over the hedgerows and fields and gates and travel the world” Don McCullin continues to work on books. Following on from his celebrated autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour, published in 1990 (appearing in France under the title Risques et périls) and numerous other books, in June 2023 he is to publish a collection devoted to the Roman heritage in Turkey. An exhibition in Rome will follow in October. It will be a busy autumn for this prolific photographer, who will preside over the international jury for the 30^th Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents on 13 and 14 October. He is looking forward to meeting up with many of his colleagues there. “I’ve always been very happy being around journalists and photographers. They’ve been my life and I’m always happy when I’m with them. It will be an opportunity for me to hear what they think about the coverage of today’s conflicts, the work of photojournalists in the digital age of social networks. I wonder a lot about the future of the media, and these exchanges will be fascinating.”  As someone who has also lost many friends over the course of the years, and in particular French photographer Gilles Caron (who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970), the memorial ceremony held in Bayeux will be an important occasion. “We can’t forget all those who have died for this cause, people who have sacrificed their lives in journalism to bring the truth of our world to our news organisations. Young journalists have to be aware that only they can keep themselves alive, or keep journalism and the industry of journalism and the news media alive. I’m coming to Bayeux for many reasons, but above all I’d like to use my voice, my influence to say ‘We must keep our eyes open’.”

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures”. (donmccullin.com)

1935 – Donald McCullin is born in London
1961 – British Press Award for his report on the building of the Berlin Wall
1964 – World Press Photo for his coverage of the civil war in Cyprus
1971 – Publication of his first photo essay The Destruction Business
1979 – Publication of Homecoming
1980 – Publication of the collection Hearts of Darkness
1992 and 1993 – Prix Erich-Salomon, Appearance of Photo Poche no 53
1993 – Became the first photojournalist to be awarded the C.B.E  (Commander of the British Empire)
1995 – His archives are represented and distributed by Contact Press Images
2001 –  Publication of Don McCullin, a major retrospective
2005 – Exhibition at the Bayeux Award
2006 – Cornell-Capa Prize (Cornell Capa Infinity Award) at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York
2007 – Publication of In England
2007 – Honoured by the Royal Photographic Society : honorary Fellowship (FRPS) and Centenary Medal for his contribution to the art of photography
2009 – Publication of the 30^th Reporters Without Borders album
2010 – Publication of Southern Frontiers, A Journey Across the Roman Empire on ruins from the Roman empire
2013 – Honorary Gold Visa from Figaro Magazine
2016 – Lucie Award for photojournalism
2017 – Made a Knight Bachelor by the Queen for services to photography. Prince Charles presided at the ceremony.
2019 – Extensive retrospective at Tate Britain, London.
2020 – ICP Lifetime Achievement Award
2023 – President of the Jury for the 30^th Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents