Meridith Kohut, who has been documenting Venezuela’s downward spiral for The New York Times, has won the fifth annual Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award. The award was created in honor of Mr. Hondros, who was killed in Libya in April 2011 along with the photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington.
When Ms. Kohut moved to Venezuela in 2008, she chronicled the rise of the socialist revolution. Her coverage of Venezuela’s economic decline has already won several prizes this year, including the Overseas Press Club’s feature award and a George Polk award, which she shared with the Times correspondent Nicholas Casey.
But the Hondros award carries special significance for Ms. Kohut, because he was one of the mentors who shaped her career. In 2007, when Ms. Kohut was 24, Mr. Hondros was her team leader at the Eddie Adams photography workshop in upstate New York. His advice and guidance led her to move to Venezuela and start freelancing for The New York Times. He stayed in touch with her until the end, sending her an encouraging email a few days before he died in Misurata.
“Even though I was literally a nobody in the photo scene, fresh out of school with no experience, Chris kept in touch after the workshop and he continued to mentor and help get me through my first few years in Venezuela when I was just getting started and very much struggling to figure everything out,” she later wrote.
Another mentor was Eli Reed, the Magnum Agency photographer, who taught her at the University of Texas at Austin, and hired her as his assistant. Without her knowledge, he filled out the application for her to the Eddie Adams Workshop. She didn’t have the money, so he arranged for the airfare for her to attend.
Mr. Reed “made me the photojournalist I am,” Ms. Kohut said, and had some role in every milestone in her career. He helped her financially while she was struggling in her early days in Venezuela and still calls her weekly with advice and support.
Mr. Reed has said she was his best student, and his interest in her career reflected his own life, when he was helped early on by Donald Greenhaus.
“It was the most important element that a young photographer can luck into because it sets a needed tone for the rest of their career,” Mr. Reed said. “I saw something in Meridith upon our first meeting at the University of Texas. It was what Donald saw in me. She has not disappointed. The bond between mentor and student is at best a lifetime thing that evolves into a family relationship that spreads into the changing world as a positive thing.”
Fittingly, Ms. Kohut strives to pay it forward and mentors many young photographers around the world. She often meets with local photographers in her apartment in Caracas to coach them or help with editing projects.
It is particularly difficult for photographers “who are not from New York or London” to succeed in the editorial field, Ms. Kohut said. “This isn’t something you learn from books,” she added. “I am only who I am because mentors put so much energy, love into my career. This doesn’t happen for a kid from Texas without the help of seasoned photojournalists helping show you the way.”
Ms. Kohut will receive the award and the $20,000 prize this Wednesday at the Aperture gallery in New York. There will also be a silent auction of prints from noted photographers including Mr. Hondros, Ms. Kohut, Bert Stern, Bryan Denton, Andrea Bruce, Daniel Berehulak and Carolyn Cole. In addition, the photos will be available in an online auction to benefit the fund.
Besides recognizing Ms. Kohut, the Hondros fund will start a new domestic reporting grant to encourage photojournalism on themes related to immigration, health care, women’s rights, and the protection of civil liberties and human rights in the United States. The $10,000 grant will go to ProPublica a nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative journalism.
Ms. Kohut spent much of 2016 working with the Times correspondent Nicholas Casey on a series of in-depth stories examining how the crisis in Venezuela affected people’s daily life.
“We found doctors working in public hospitals that were similar to war zones, with no antibiotics, no pain medicine and shortages of gauze and syringes,” Ms. Kohut said.
After a decade living in Venezuela it feels more like home than the United States, Ms. Kohut said, adding that she is “extremely committed” to telling the story with the “depth and sensitivity that can only come from spending so much time there.”
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