Giannis Behrakis; A Greek legend who made history

Giannis Behrakis was a Greek photojournalist and head of the photographic section of the Reuters news agency in Greece. With his lens he managed to capture the most important political, military, sporting and social events of the last 30 years. His photographs depict wars in various parts of the world, the migration and refugee crisis, as well as major political and sporting events.
 
What made him stand out from any other photojournalist of recent years was his sensitivity, his rare morality and humanity. These three distinct characteristics of his personality made his work unique, yet at the same time hard, just like the reality we live in. He has been one of the best photojournalists of recent years and has been honored numerous times for his work in Greece and abroad, while in 2015, he was named Best Photographer of the Year for the Guardian and in 2016 he won a Pulitzer for his coverage on the refugee crisis.
 
The reason for starting his career was the fact that through a photograph he could capture what people wanted to express. In other words, each photograph had the power to express reality no matter how harsh it was, no matter how far away it was. As he used to say, he didn’t care about whether his photographs were perfect, he was a non-artist photojournalist. His mission was to make sure that no one could say they didn’t know.
 
Born in 1960 in Athens, John Behrakis studied photography at the Athens School of Arts and Technology and at Middlesex University in London. He then worked as a photographer in Athens between 1985-86 and in 1987 he was hired by Reuters. Just a year later, he was offered a permanent job at the Athens-based agency. His first mission was in January 1989 in Libya. Since then, he has been present at the biggest events in the world. In the late 1990s, he decided to relocate to Kosovo for years, living close to the Yugoslav civil war. When he entered a leveled village in 1998, he was the one who informed one of the few survivors left about the winner of the battle.
 
He later covered a number of horrific events for the Reuters agency, and two years later, in 2000, he and his colleague, who were covering the Yugoslav war, decided to go to the most murderous, perhaps, frontier of the world, Sierra Leone. In an ambush set up by the guerrillas, he was miraculously saved and saw his friend, Kurt Shork, fall dead from a bullet next to him. He never overcame his death and has since tried to protect, as he could, his colleagues and friends, even at risk of his life. He talked about this experience in 2013 at TEDxAthens and shocked all in attendance. (You can watch his speech by clicking on the following link

 

In 2008, he moved with his wife and his only 11-month-old daughter to Jerusalem for a year as the director of the Reuters photographic section for Israel and Palestine. In 2010, he returned to Greece to cover the economic crisis, resulting in his attendance to many demonstrations, in the pulse of the events. He had become accustomed to changing fronts and living dangerously, as he almost fell dead from the shells of Chechen separatists, and was also in danger in Afghanistan, in the old boat wandering the Adriatic on Christmas Eve 2018, photographing refugees. Finally, the mission to Kabbani was also dangerous, where there, at the Syrian border with Turkey, he experienced closely the deportation of ISIS jihadists.
 
He has received many awards, including the title of “Greek Photojournalist of the Year” for 7 times by Fuji. In 1999, 2002 and 2003 he was named Top European Photojournalist of the Year by Fuji in London, Barcelona and Rome respectively. In 2000, in Amsterdam he was awarded the first prize in the News category at the WORLD PRESS PHOTO photo competition among 4,000 photographers from 122 countries and 40,000 photographs, the most important award in the world of photography.
 
That same year, he was awarded the OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB of AMERICA in New York for the best foreign reportage in the United States, which is the most important foreign correspondent award in America. In 2000, he was also awarded the Botsi Foundation Prize by the President of the Republic, and on October 14, 2002, he won the Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents at the annual World Contest for the award of journalists covering war conflicts. In 2015, the Guardian named him the Photographer of the Year.
 
On March 2, 2019, the award-winning Greek photojournalist left his last breath at the age of 59, after a tough and unjust battle against cancer. Among countless reports about his loss, Reuters characterizes him as one of the agency’s most distinguished and beloved photographers, “In his 30-year career, Behrakis covered many of the most hectic events in the world, including the conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya, a very powerful earthquake in Kashmir and the uprising in Egypt in 2011. Along the way, he has earned the respect of both his associates and his opponents for his abilities and bravery. “
 

 

Translation: Kleio Antonaki, Niki Saridaki

 

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