Danish Siddiqui, the slain photojournalist, was remembered by his father as someone who “faced all kinds of pressures” yet was unmoved by them. Siddiqui is one of four Indians to get the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 2022, which was revealed late Monday night. Let’s see what Danish Siddiqui father said.
Siddiqui’s Death
Last year, the 38-year-old was slain while reporting a fight between Afghan security forces and Taliban militants in Kandahar’s Spin Boldak area. His images of funeral pyres at mass crematoriums of Covid-19 victims in Delhi drew worldwide attention.
Words By Danish Siddiqui Father
When the pandemic was raging over India, Danish Siddiqui father Mohammad Akhtar Siddiqui recalls his son traveling to numerous towns, including Haridwar and Bhagalpur. “He did this task under the most trying conditions, going deep into the wards and getting near to patients suffering from Covid.” He would feel the people’s pain and suffering. He was a workaholic with a strong professional commitment. While he was unconcerned about himself, he will take all reasonable efforts to avoid infecting his family. He always celebrated Eid with his family, but he didn’t come to see us that year because he didn’t want us to catch a virus from him,” he recalls.
Siddiqui’s photograph of a naga sadhu donning a mask before entering the Ganga during the ceremonial shahi snan at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar in April last year is also on the Pulitzer website. In another shot, a son fanned his mother with a handkerchief in the back seat of a car as she received oxygen in a gurdwara parking lot. Siddiqui also photographed meticulously wrapped urns holding ashes collected after the funeral rituals of victims, awaiting immersion due to a nationwide lockdown, at a cremation in Delhi in May 2021, during the peak of the epidemic, when many died alone.
Amit Dave of Ahmedabad got his interest in photography from his father, who also collected cameras. He watched the figures and chronicled the spike in Gujarat when the pandemic’s Delta wave crossed India in 2021. A healthcare worker checks the temperature of a woman in her hut during a coronavirus vaccination push for workers at a brick kiln in Kavitha hamlet on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in April 2021, according to his photos on the Pulitzer website. Dave also reported on the tsunami that struck Tamil Nadu in 2004.
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Sanna Irshad Mattoo, a 2021 Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice fellow, accompanied healthcare professionals in Kashmir as they gave Covid’s vaccination to individuals across the state. Her snapshot from the Valley, taken in June 2021 at Lidderwat in Kashmir’s Anantnag district, shows a shepherd receiving the Covid vaccine.
Conclusion
Siddiqui has already received the Pulitzer Prize for the second time. In 2018, he and the rest of the Reuters crew received the prestigious award for their coverage of the Rohingya crisis. He covered the Afghanistan war, the Hong Kong riots, and other key events in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe extensively.
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