Awards
AFP Photographer Mahmud Turkia Wins Grand Prix Varenne
AFP photographer Mahmud Turkia has won the Grand Prix Varenne with a photograph that captures the encounter between a Libyan patrol and African migrants near the Tunisian border.
Taken on July 30, 2023, the photograph shows the moment when Libyan border guards provide water to a group of Sub-Saharan African migrants collapsed from exhaustion on the reddish-brown desert sand, near Al'Assah, 150 kilometres southwest of Tripoli.
The African men in the photograph are among hundreds of migrants arriving daily in Libya after being abandoned in the desert borderland by Tunisian security forces, according to Libyan border guards and the migrants themselves.
Libyan Photographer Mahmud Turkia, 44, has worked as a freelancer for AFP since 2008 and is based in Tripoli.
Under the leadership of photojournalist Pascal Maitre, the judging panel for the award included Pascal Chareyron, Michel Wasielewski, Jean-Louis Beltran, Roch Lorente, Philippe Page, Anne-Sophie Pédégert, Laurence Geai, Pierre Fernandez, and Rémy Le Morvan.
The Grand Prix Varenne is open to photojournalists, photographers and reporters registered with the French media or news agencies.
In 2022, AFP photographer Eduardo Soteras from Argentina, won the same prize for a photograph depicting the plight of displaced individuals in the Tigray conflict.