The Guardian picks AFP’s Turkish photographer Kılıç best in 2014

LONDON

A man protects a woman as they face a police officer dispersing protesters who gathered on the central Istoklal avenue near Taksim square in Istanbul, on May 31. AFP Photo

AFP’s Turkish photographer Bülent Kılıç has been picked by The Guardian newspaper’s picture desk as the contested agency photographer of the year.

“Here’s a look back over 2014 through his lens, showing unrest in Ukraine, the refugee crisis on the Turkish-Syrian border and the harrowing MH17 air crash,” the U.K. paper wrote on a photo gallery, as he was announced the winner.

Kılıç’s photographs from the Ukrainian unrest, Istanbul clashes between riot police and protesters following the funeral of 16-year-old Gezi Park victim Berkin Elvan, the Soma mine disaster which claimed 301 lives and the refugee flood to Turkey from Syria were displayed by The Guardian.

In December, 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.

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.
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.