J-school alumna wins inaugural photojournalism award

Andrea Bruce, a 1995 UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media alumna, won the inaugural Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award.

The award is a memorial to Chris Hondros, who was killed photographing in Libya in 2011. It comes with $20,000 for Bruce to pursue documentary projects. It will be presented at a benefit for the Chris Hondros Fund on June 21 in New York.

Hondros spoke at the UNC J-school’s PhotoNight series in April 2007.

For the past decade, Bruce has photographed the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan for news organizations that include The Washington Post and The New York Times. She also wrote a weekly column for The Post called “Unseen Iraq.”

She has been named Photographer of the Year four times by the White House News Photographers Association and has won awards from the International Pictures of the Year contest. She also is a recipient of the John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club in New York.

The Chris Hondros Fund supports and advances the work of photojournalists and raises awareness of the issues facing those reporting from conflict areas. It was established in honor of Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist Chris Hondros, who covered conflicts beginning in the late 1990s, including conflicts in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The New York Times' Lens blog was a source for this article.