AFP’s Turkish photographer Bülent Kılıç awarded by Time Magazine

ISTANBUL

A man kisses his son, rescued from a mine after an explosion hit a coal mine in Soma on May 13. AFP Photo / Bülent Kılıç

Agence France-Presse’s Turkish photographer Bülent Kılıç received Time Magazine’s prestigious Best Wire Photographer of 2014 award, with his stunning shots in a busy year full of events in Turkey.

Particularly, his photograph catching the emotion of a father seeing his miner son rescued became a defining image of the distress that followed the worst mining disaster in Turkey’s history in the Aegean coal capital of Soma, which cost the lives of 301 workers.

Kılıç recalls the situation as a thorny one for a photographer. “Some miners and their families were attacking the press. You have to understand, their children, their husbands were trapped in the mine,” he told Time Magazine, recognizing that the picture was a “very important one” for him.

The 35-year-old photographer also succeeded in capturing the exact moment when fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were the target of an air strike on a hill nearby the besieged Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane in another memorable photograph.

Kılıç explained in his interview with Time that 2014 has been an exhausting year, as he ran to and fro from one event to another, starting with the clashes in Ukraine in January. He also said he missed spending time at home with his wife and baby boy. “When you go on an assignment for many weeks, or months even, at a time, you have to find time to stay at home,” he says, while adding that his family shows full support for his work. “They know I like this life and this job, and they respect it.”

Previous winners of the award were Muhammed Muheisen in 2013, Marco Longari in 2012, Pete Muller in 2011 and Mauricio Lima in 2010.

You can click here to read Time Magazine’s article on Kılıç.

Here are some of Kılıç's shots that marked 2014: