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The 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Feature Photography

Finalist: Photography Staff of Associated Press

For images capturing the vulnerability, trauma and defiance of elderly Ukrainians caught in the Russian invasion, many of them unable or unwilling to flee the carnage. 

Nominated Work

Motria Oleksiienko, 99-years-old, traumatized by the Russian occupation, is comforted by daughter-in-law Tetiana Oleksiienko in a room without heating in the village of Andriivka, Ukraine, which was heavily affected by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. Several buildingsa in the village were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal and residents struggle without heat, electricity or cooking gas. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda.)

Elderly people are evacuated from a hospice in Chasiv Yar city, Donetsk district, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. At least 35 men and women, some in wheelchairs and most of them with mobility issues, were helped by volunteers to flee from the region that has been under attack in the last weeks. They are being transported to Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris.)

Seventy-year-old pensioner Valerii Ilchenko, who lives alone and is refusing to evacuate, watches television in his apartment, in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, July 6, 2022. Now a widower, Ilchenko says he still has no intention of leaving. "I don't have anywhere to go and don't want to either. What would I do there? Here at least I can sit on the bench, I can watch TV," he says in an interview in his single-room apartment. (Photo by Nariman El-Mofty.)

Dr. Yurii Kuznetsov, left, helps nurses to move an elderly patient onto a bed at the hospital in Izium, Ukraine, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022. (Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka.)

A Ukrainian elderly woman eats a slice of bread inside a crowded Lviv railway station, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022, in Lviv, west Ukraine. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

Viktor Holodeyev, 76, left, is tended to by a nurse while on an evacuation train with his wife, Tatiana, 72, as they depart from Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, to travel west to a safer part of the country, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. The government issued an order to residents to leave the Donetsk region in the face of the Russian offensive as they're preparing for fall and winter and fear that many there may not have access to heating, electricity, or even clean water. (Photo by David Goldman.)

Ukrainian injured servicemen and an injured civilian wait for medical treatment in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, June 7, 2022. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

Elderly residents are evacuated by a local organization from the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine, Nov. 27, 2022. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

Patients eat a meal in a shelter for injured and homeless people in Izium, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. (Photo by Evgeniy Maloletka.)

A woman reacts after receiving food donations from World Central Kitchen in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

Vasyl Nevolov, an internally displaced Ukrainian from Kyiv, rests inside a theatre in the city of Drohobych, western Ukraine, Monday, March 21, 2022. The theatre has become a meeting point, where artists, including those displaced from other parts of Ukraine, have turned their talents to making food for soldiers and others as part of a massive volunteer war effort across the country. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

Elena Holovko sits among debris while being helped outside her house that was damaged after a missile strike in Druzhkivka, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, June 5, 2022. (Photo by Bernat Armangue.)

An elderly man lies at a hospice center in Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk district of Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022. At least 35 men and women were helped by volunteers to flee the region that has been under attack and taken to Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris.)

A man looks at buildings destroyed during Russian attacks on Borodyanka on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, June 4, 2022. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko.)

Catherine, 70, looks out the window while holding a candle for light inside her house during a power outage, in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. Airstrikes cut power and water supplies to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, part of what the country's president called an expanding Russian campaign to drive the nation into the cold and dark and make peace talks impossible. (Photo by Emilio Morenatti.)

Winners

Prize Winner in Feature Photography in 2023:

Christina House of the Los Angeles Times

For an intimate look into the life of a pregnant 22-year-old woman living on the street in a tent–images that show her emotional vulnerability as she tries and ultimately loses the struggle to raise her child. Feature Photography

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Feature Photography in 2023:

Gabrielle Lurie and Stephen Lam of the San Francisco Chronicle

For their painstaking documentation of fentanyl addiction in the city that led officials to create supervised drug consumption locations and voters to approve an oversight commission for the homeless hotels where 40% of overdoses occur.

The Jury

Cathaleen Curtiss(Chair)

Interim Director of Photography, The Buffalo News

Don Bartletti

Former Photojournalist, Los Angeles Times

Kyndell Harkness

Assistant Managing Editor, Diversity and Community, Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn.

Sandy Hooper

Deputy Managing Editor, Visuals, USA Today

Ryan Christopher Jones

Photojournalist, Somerville, Mass.

Winners in Feature Photography

2019

Lorenzo Tugnoli of The Washington Post

For brilliant photo storytelling of the tragic famine in Yemen, shown through images in which beauty and composure were intertwined with devastation. (Moved by the jury from Breaking News Photography, where it was originally entered.)
See All Feature Photography

2023 Prize Winners

Commentary

Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham

For measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments–and through the history that has been omitted.
Investigative Reporting

Staff of The Wall Street Journal

For sharp accountability reporting on financial conflicts of interest among officials at 50 federal agencies, revealing those who bought and sold stocks they regulated and other ethical violations by individuals charged with safeguarding the public’s interest.
See All 2023 Winners