Saher Alghorra picked up his first camera less than a decade ago – but his Pulitzer-winning photos stopped me in my tracks

Saher Alghorra picked up his first camera in 2017 and started working as a photojournalist in 2021 – but when I saw the Gaza-based photographer’s award-winning photographs, the images stopped me in my tracks. Alghorra has won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for a series documenting the devastation and starvation in Gaza.

Algorra’s photographs carry tangible emotion as Palestinians hold out pans for a meal, as families mourn losses, as a mother holds a starving two-year-old denied care at a hospital, as a front loader digs a mass grave, as a child stands near a destroyed car.

The series, as the Pulitzer Prize committee describes, is a “haunting” series of the devastation families in the region face amid the Israel-Gaza war. One photograph in particular, taken on March 04, 2025, stopped me in my tracks: A family of four sitting down to a Ramadan fast in the crumbling remains of their home.

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The photograph’s impact comes from the jarring juxtaposition. The image of a family sitting down at a table together is a familiar one. But the rest of the image is a literal picture of devastation. The family’s home only has a few walls remaining, and, except for a small cleared path that a motorbike is driving on, rubble fills the rest of the image.

The juxtaposition and composition create a powerful image that conveys one family’s attempts at normalcy in a time when nothing is normal. “I took their pictures because I felt they were clinging to life, tending to their wounds, and trying to rebuild their lives with the simplest of means,” Alghorra said.

I believe the best photographs often come from photographers to a connection to their subject – and that’s one reason why I feel Alghorra’s series of photographs carries so much impact. The photojournalist was born in Gaza and continues to live and work there.

Alghorra only picked up his first camera in 2017, yet the young photojournalist has an important connection with the people and places in front of his lens. As the New York Times notes, international journalists are banned without an Israeli escort, limiting the number of photographs that tell the world the story of the devastation in the region.

The series was taken on assignment for The New York Times. His work has also appeared in The Guardian, TIME magazine, and The Telegraph. Just two years after starting a career in photojournalism, he became the ZUMA Press Wire Chief Photo-Journalist for Gaza and won a Time 100 Magazine best photos of the year in the same year.

The Pulitzer Prize jury also selected two finalists for the Breaking News category. The photography staff at Reuters received recognition for coverage of immigration enforcement across the US, while the Photography staff of the Los Angeles Times was honored for their series capturing the deadly urban wildfires in Los Angeles.

Alghorra’s Pulitzer joins a list of prizes awarded to journalists, photographers, writers, musicians, and other artists. Photographer Jahi Chikwendiu also received a Pulitzer in the Feature Photography category for a series documenting a young family welcoming their first child as the father faced terminal cancer.

Alghorra’s photo of the family sitting together in the ruins is part of a series of equally haunting images – view additional images from the winning series at the Pulitzer Prize website, at the New York Times, or by following the photographer on Instagram.