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Bryan Denton has been awarded the 2016 Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund award for his exceptional photojournalism. According to Denton, who was friends with Hondros and considered him a mentor, receiving the accolade is a “bittersweet motivation to keep pushing my work forward, and to do so with the kind, grace and spirit that Chris embodied both in his work and in life.”

Denton elaborated on this in an interview with The New York Times: “I don’t feel like patting myself on the back for receiving this,” he explained. “For me this is like a kick in the ass — a reason to continue to push harder in my work and to re-examine and redouble my efforts to get better in telling stories that allow people to connect more with what’s going on in the world.”

Denton has been based in Lebanon since 2006 and has covered stories in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and Afghanistan for publications such as The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME and The Wall Street Journal. Denton was named as a finalist for this award in 2013. Denton will receive a $20,000 grant to support his ongoing work. He is the fifth photojournalist to receive the prestigious award.

Kiana Hayeri
Kabul, Afghanistan: A 23 year old police officer, unable to speak from a severe injury to his jaw caused by shrapnel during the fighting against Taliban, lays in his bed at the Italian Emergency Hospital, while nurses treat his wounds on his back. May 25, 2015. © Kiana Hayeri

Kiana Hayeri was selected by the Chris Hondros Fund for the Emerging Photojournalist award, which offers a $5000 grant. Hayeri is a current TED fellow who is based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Both photographers will be honored during a May 4 reception at Aperture Gallery in New York.

Bryan Denton
Antelias, Lebanon: The skulls of victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, are displayed in a monolithic glass column at a small memorial chapel located on the grounds of the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, located in Antelias, Lebanon. The remains were brought to Lebanon in the 1930’s from Deir ez-Zor in Syria according to church officials. The memorial chapel and church are constructed on grounds that originally hosted an orphanage established by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East in 1922, for Armenian children who lost their parents in the genocide. March 30, 2015. © Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Bryan Denton
Kakeran, Afghanistan: The smoke from a controlled detonation of an improvised explosive could be seen through tall grass in the hamlet of Kakeran, where US and Afghan forces conducted a joint clearing operation, in Zhari district, Kandahar Province. February 18, 2013. © Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Bryan Denton
Misrata, Libya: A rebel gravedigger burries a long row of Qadafi government troops killed in fighting in the city of Misurata, Thursday. As fighting continues in the besieged coastal city of Misurata, Rebel forces have been burrying the bodies of Qadafi loyalist military and militia fighters in a seaside cemetary, amid sand dunes. Unlike Qadafi’s forces, who have alledgedly been burning rebel dead, Rebel forces have sought to bury dead loyalist fighters according to Islamic customs, interning each body in a numbered grave, and cataloguing their belongings at a secondary location. While there reportedly several sites where dead Qadafi soldiers have been burried, this one held at least 301 as of Thursday, indicating that Qadafi’s forces have suffered heavy casualties in the battle for the city. May 5, 2011. © Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Kiana Hayeri
Tehran, Iran: At the Grand Bazar, a clothing store sells fashion and clothing imported from Turkey, which has got more difficult and more expensive, making it hard to compete with locally made fashion goods. November 18, 2013. © Kiana Hayeri
Kiana Hayeri
Kabul, Afghanistan: Every Friday the Shahre Now park fills up with hundreds of young afghan men who come to the park to play volleyball, soccer or cricket. March 12, 2015. © Kiana Hayeri