Yannis Behrakis was born in 1960 in
Athens. He studied photography in the Athens School of Arts and Technology and received his BA (Honours) from
Middlesex University. He worked as a studio photographer in Athens in 1985–86. In 1987 he started a working relation as a contractor for Reuters and in late 1988 he was offered a staff job with the agency based in Athens. His first foreign assignment was in
Libya in January 1989. Since then he documented a variety of events including the funeral of
Ayatollah Khomeini in
Iran, the changes in
Eastern Europe and the
Balkans, the wars in
Croatia,
Bosnia and
Kosovo,
Chechnya,
Sierra Leone,
Somalia,
Afghanistan,
Lebanon, the first and second Gulf wars in
Iraq, the
Arab Spring in
Egypt,
Libya and
Tunisia, the
war in Donbas, the
NATO bombing of
ISIS in
Kobane,
Syria, the
Greek government-debt crisis and the
European migrant crisis in 2015. He also covered the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict for many years, earthquakes in
Kashmir,
Turkey, Greece and Iran and major news events around the world. He also covered four
Summer Olympics, the
1994 World Cup in the US and many international sports events. He moved with Reuters to
Jerusalem as the chief photographer for Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2008/9. In 2010 he moved back in Greece to cover the
Greek government-debt crisis. He took part in group and solo exhibitions in Athens,
Thessaloniki,
London,
Edinburgh,
New York,
Rome,
Barcelona,
Madrid,
Portugal,
France and
Dubai. In 2000, Behrakis survived an
ambush in
Sierra Leone where the American reporter
Kurt Schork and Spanish cameraman
Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora of
Associated Press Television were killed. He and South African cameraman Mark Chisholm managed to get away from the attackers. In 2016, he led a Thomson Reuters team to win the 2016
Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. Behrakis died after a long battle with cancer in Athens on 2 March 2019, aged 58. Behrakis is survived by his daughter Rebecca, son Dimitri and his wife, Elisavet. == Awards==