Samuel Aranda

Samuel Aranda ( b. 1979 in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain ) is a Spanish photojournalist.

Life and career

Aranda began at the age of 19 years to work as a photographer for the Spanish newspaper El País and El Periódico de Catalunya. Two years later, he traveled to the Middle East to report to the Spanish news agency EFE on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Since 2004 he worked for the news agency AFP, for which he reported from Spain, Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, Morocco, Western Sahara and China.

His 2006 report published on traveling to Europe African refugees received the Spanish National Prize for Photography photojournalist Association ANIGP TV. Since then, Aranda worked as a freelance photographer again. Among other things, he reported on the desiccating Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, social conflicts in India, from Kosovo, about the Football World Cup 2010 in South Africa, from Colombia, from the Transnistrian conflict, about street children in Bucharest and the Italian Camorra.

From 2011, he documented the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. One of his pictures from reporting on a demonstration during the protests in Yemen won the award as a press photographer of the year 2011, the most coveted award in photojournalism. It shows a veiled Muslim woman holds a wounded relatives in the arm. The jury justified the decision by saying that the photo is an example " for the whole region " stand, the protests in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria symbolizes and thus also the entire Arab Spring.