Tyler Hicks is a staff photographer for The New York Times. Mr. Hicks began working for the Times as a freelance photographer covering the war in Kosovo in 1997. He earned a contract with the Times in 1999, based in Nairobi, Kenya and photographed conflicts in Congo, Somalia and Sudan.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hicks traveled to Afghanistan for the Times and arrived in Kabul when the Northern Alliance liberated the city from Taliban control. His award winning photographs of the execution of a Taliban fighter earned international attention. He has returned to Afghanistan every year since and continues to document the conflict there.
Mr. Hicks graduated in 1992 with a B.A. in journalism from Boston University. After graduation, he worked as a photographer’s assistant at a commercial studio in Boston and then at The Troy Daily News, a small newspaper in Ohio where he spent a year as chief photographer.
He then moved on to North Carolina as a staff photographer for three years at The Wilmington Star-News in North Carolina. During this time, he photographed personal projects in Haiti, Albania and Kosovo. Moved by the atrocities he saw in Kosovo, Mr. Hicks left his job to pursue a career in international news.
As a freelancer for the Times, Mr. Hicks lived with a Kosovar family while covering the escalating conflict in the Balkans. Two years later, with the arrival of peacekeepers and an end to the conflict, he left to Africa to cover the escalating war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
In 2009 Hicks’ photographs were part of a team Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting shared by the New York Times for its coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He received the Newspaper Photographer of the Year award from Pictures of the Year International (POYI) for his work in 2006. In 2001, Mr. Hicks was the recipient of the 2001 ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism for his coverage in Afghanistan, as well as other awards, including World Press, Pictures of the Year and the Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan, France.
Mr. Hicks was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on July 9, 1969. He lives in Istanbul, Turkey.
