Pro in focus
Brent Stirton
Brent Stirton is one of the world’s hardest-working photojournalists, and his work features in a new book about global conservation. Steve Fairclough discovers more…
Brent Stirton Photojournalist
A South African photojournalist who has had work published by National Geographic,Geo,LeFigaro,Time, and many other international titles, Stirton has worked for WWF, CNN and the World Economic Forum, and shoots regular reports for Human Rights Watch. His awards include 12 World Press Photo Awards and 13 in the Pictures of the Year International contest.
Stirton’s images have has appeared in exhibitions around the world and are in a number of museum collections. He currently spends most of his time on long-term investigative projects for NationalGeographic,and is a senior correspondent for Getty Images. www.brentstirton.com
A fishing festival in Sanjou, Pendjari National Park, Benin. The park is the largest remaining intact ecosystem in West Africa.
Brent Stirton
Brent Stirton is usually absurdly busy. On average he spends eight or nine months a year travelling the world, documenting issues such as Aids, wildlife crime, conservation and blindness. Often this will involve visiting dozens of countries in any 12-month period – but his normal workflow has been curtailed due to the global pandemic and, for the first few months of 2021, kept him grounded in his California home, from where he spoke to Digital Camera.
Stirton was originally a print journalist in his home country of South Africa – but, at one point, rather than teaming up with a photographer to accompany him on stories, he saved up and bought a secondhand Canon A1 camera. Beginning a new storytelling path that combined words and pictures, he was soon training his lens on major stories such as the historic 1994 election in South Africa, famine in Somalia, the conflict in Rwanda and the fall of the Democratic Republic of Congo.