Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer John MacDougall has won Germany’s Rueckblende prize.
MacDougall, who has worked across five different countries for AFP since 1989, has been based in the Berlin bureau for nearly 10 years.
Depicting a German female soldier embracing a victim’s relative at a military funeral in Afghanistan, this is the first AFP image to be awarded the Rueckblende prize, which has run since 1995.
Judges said the picture highlighted the human aspect of the Afghanistan tragedy.
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The Paris-born photographer said: ‘Of the four photos I selected to put forward for the prize, I’m glad it was this one that was chosen because, for me, it was the strongest.”
The competition, which has €7,000 prize, saw MacDougall’s image up against 247 others.
Emanuel Hoog, chief executive of AFP, said: ‘This prestigious prize awarded to an AFP photographer for the first time demonstrates once again the quality of the work of our teams in Germany, and the talent of our journalists operating in our 200 bureaus around the world.”
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