Photography Staff of Reuters

To the judges:

The migrants came shivering in dinghies, scrambling over stones, tramping through fields and crawling beneath razor-wire. On the way they were rescued, rained on, crushed, blockaded and beaten. Almost 900,000 came through Turkey, many starting out on inflatable boats for the Mediterranean crossing into Greece. Half a million were Syrians risking the epic journey to escape war.

It’s possible to reach Europe through North Africa and Italy. But the route via Turkey and Greece is safer than the desert and involves a shorter sea crossing, which is why thousands of families made that trek last year. Along the way, a team of Reuters photographers, working in relay, captured and transmitted their incredible stories.

Traditionally, refugees are the subject of pity. The Reuters images, used in newspapers and on websites around the globe, conveyed the people’s courage, dignity, hope and determination.

In one image, the sun rises over a boat crossing the waters off Turkey. Its outboard engine has just failed. In another, the group’s dinghy has deflated about 100 yards from the shore, ditching the father of a small child, who balances the baby on a life tube as he flounders to safety. In a third, a father stumbles in the water, struggling to keep his drenched baby’s head from going under.

The journalistic challenges of such a story are immense. Photographers cannot ignore distress, but neither can they be aid workers. As they record lives stripped of privacy, they must not intrude. If asked for directions they can help, but they should not offer transport.

“Photographing the migrants was the ultimate test of staying out of the story,” says Reuters photographer Bernadett Szabo. “There is no way to shake the emotional impact.... You have to let the story wash through you to remain human.”

For the travelers, it was a voyage into the unknown. In one image, an elderly Palestinian woman sits on a beach in the Greek island of Kos after landing with her family. She had accepted a small sweet, a traditional gesture of hospitality, and exchanged small talk in broken English and Arabic with photographer Yannis Behrakis. Her smile radiated tranquility. She signaled that she was blind.

As the travelers headed north, an image shot in a rainstorm shows how the climate – and the welcome - cooled. In the picture, a Syrian father walks down the middle of a road towards the camera. He has made himself a cape from a black plastic garbage bag and his sodden arms are wrapped around his young daughter, whom he carries through the rain. At the point we see him, he is kissing the child on the cheek.

“He looked very proud,” says the photographer Behrakis. “People ask me, ‘Why doesn’t he go on the sidewalk?’” The picture triggered a fundraising campaign on social media.

Pushed back, pleading with soldiers, or beaten with truncheons as they tried to vault on to overcrowded trains, the young men in the groups took their chances. But families had less flexibility. They slithered through muddy border crossings, picked their way over abandoned clothing and footwear and stumbled on rail tracks towards Hungary.

There, they were not welcome. One of the most powerful images shows a family climbing into Hungary through coils of razor-wire. After a long wait watching police at the Serbian border, the family is making a run for it. One of the men uses a blanket to protect his hands as he lifts the spiky wire. The mother crawls underneath it, her baby under her arm, the child’s pacifier in one hand and her terrified daughter clinging to her back. She looks out defiantly for guards. As soon as they were through, the family vanished into the woods.

Some argued that barriers like these were forcing people into desperate acts. In September Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would relax the immigration rules on humanitarian grounds.

A month later, Reuters captured a cluster of migrant families marching behind a German police van through neat green fields near the Austrian border. On the final stretch of their journey, the figures walk with straight backs and long strides. They stick to the pavement, mirroring the order and peace around them – a peace which is finally within reach.

This historic journey has been cast as a test of unity for Europe. While it is certainly that, it is also - and more importantly - the desperate escape of more than a million people. To depict that flight with humanity and respect calls for photojournalism of the highest order. I am proud to nominate the work for a Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography.

Sincerely,

Stephen J. Adler

Editor-in-Chief

Reuters