Karsten Thielker

Karsten Thielker is a German Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer and journalist.
He was born on 12 November 1966 in Bensberg. Thielker focuses primarily on Exhibition Design, Photography and Photojournalism.

Initially, he was interested in travel photography; but an assignment by Associated Press to cover the Yugoslavian War drove him to war genre. He saw it as an opportunity to travel and to check his possible reactions in extreme situations, so he seized it: his career on conflict zones had started. Thielker´s most famous work is a photograph of Rwandan refugees carry water back to a camp in Tanzania that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. At that time, he reported the Hutus and Tutsis overwhelming civil war together with Jaqueline Artz, Javier Bauluz and Jean-Marc Bouju. His works have been exhibited in various European countries, in Mexico and in Nigeria and he has also conducted workshops for the Goethe Institute. Thielker worked for the Associated Press from 1990-1996 and as a freelance photographer from Berlin since 1997. He is known to be one of those photo journalists who have worked surrounded by confrontations with death, ethical issues and the consequences they witness when they report from conflict zones.

Since 1917: he was a freelance photographer in Berlin. 1990-1996: he worked as a photographer for the news agency Associated Press. 1981-1990: worked at Rheinzeitung newspaper (Koblenz, Mainz).

For the Goethe Institute in Laos, Nigeria, and Guadalajara, México.

For the daily newspaper Tageszeitung and for Internet Image Database (www.piaxa.com).

1995: Pulitzer 2002: Platz Rückblende.

• 1995: Pulitzer Prize