LA Times foreign correspondent and photojournalist Marcus Yam wins Pulitzer Prize for work in Afghanistan

LOS ANGELES — Marcus Yam, a Los Angeles Times journalist with a warrior’s courage and a poet’s heart, won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography Monday for his poignant and searing pictures of last summer’s fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, to Taliban fighters.

Yam delivered pictures of unspeakable tragedy and abiding emotion despite a manhandling by one of the insurgents, the near-constant menace of other fighters and the abundant technical hurdles of transmitting images out of a war zone.

Yam’s prize was for what the judges described as “raw and urgent images of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan that captured the human costs of the historic change in the country.” He shared the award with four photographers from Getty Images, commended for their “comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”