Chakarova Wins Daniel Pearl Award

In a statement from the award administrators, Judge Ginger Thompson of the New York Times said she was captivated by Chakarova’s documentary: “Her attention to detail and dignity in her portrayals of victims, and the breathtaking courage she showed during her forays into the criminal underworld should serve as the professional standard to which all investigative reporters aspire.”

Chakarova, a native of Bulgaria, has taught photography at the Graduate School of Journalism for more than a decade. She has also taught photography at Stanford University’s African and African American Studies and Comparative Studies for Race and Ethnicity. She is the recipient of the 2003 Dorothea Lange Fellowship for outstanding work in documentary photography and the 2005 Magnum Photos Inge Morath Award for her work on sex trafficking.

In 2007, Chakarova became the series curator of FRONTLINE/World’s FlashPoint, featuring the work of established and emerging photographers from around the world.

The awards honor Daniel Pearl, the slain Wall St. Journal reporter, and celebrate the best in cross-border investigative reporting. This year’s biennial competition attracted 70 entries from 30 countries. An international panel of five judges selected seven finalists, from which they chose one U.S. winner and one international winner.
The Pearl Awards are administered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

ICIJ is a global network of reporters who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories. Founded in 1997, ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to extend the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, focusing on issues that do not stop at national frontiers.