Siegfried Modola
Siegfried Modola is an award-winning, Kenya-raised Italian and British photojournalist and documentary photographer focusing on social, humanitarian, and geopolitical events. He lives in Paris with a base in Nairobi.
He has reported from most countries in Africa and has traversed the globe, venturing into diverse and often challenging environments to shed light on untold stories. He is fluent in English, Italian, and Kiswahili and gets by in French. He has worked in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America, from the post-coup d'etat conflict in Myanmar to the civil war in South Sudan and the conflict in Somalia to the chronic insecurity gripping the Central African Republic and Nigeria to the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He has covered the Venezuelan refugee crisis on its borders, the depopulation of the Italian countryside, immigration issues in Italy and France, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, the Syrian refugee crisis in northern Iraq in 2016 and the exodus of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in 2017, 2018 and 2019. His in-depth reporting on the war in Myanmar won the Visa d’Or News prize, the Nikon & Bayeux Award, the Luis Valtueña Award and the Picture of the Year International Issue Reporting Picture story in 2023.
Why did you become a journalist?
In the 1990s, East and the Horn of Africa were going through a tumultuous and often violent period. Nairobi, where I was based, became a place where journalists, world leaders, warlords, and aid workers met and manoeuvred in the geopolitics of those times. I was a kid then, but I was never too far from reading the headlines of refugee crises and meeting world-class foreign correspondents when, at times, they came for dinner with my parents. It was here that I started understanding the importance of not only being a witness to world events, but also of nurturing the skills needed to report to a world that wanted to know what was happening. Some years later, a good friend gave me a Canon camera with a wide-angle lens during a sabbatical journey across Asia after my studies. On this trip, I started really thinking about the way I took photographs. I began to look deeper into what I was seeing and to try to show a story that could transcend the framed moment of a single image.
Years in Journalism
Education
BA in Journalism and Media Communication, Griffith College Dublin, 2004
Master’s in Photojournalism at the London College of Communication, 2008
Honours & Awards
Romano Cagnoni Award Special Mention, 2024
Runner-up citation for the Overseas Press Club of America's Continuing Coverage of Conflict Award, 2024
Winner of the Visa d'Or News in Perpignan, France, 2023
Winner of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents, France, 2023
Winner of the Luis Valtueña Award, Spain, 2023
Winner of WARS III, Italy, 2023
Silver Prize and Award of Excellence from the Society for News Design, US, 2023
First place in the Picture of the Year International Issue Reporting Picture story, U.S., 2023
Nominated to participate in the Leica Oskar Barnack Award competition, 2021
Selected for Reuters Pictures of the Decade, 2019
Shortlisted for the Climate Visual Photography Awards in Oxford, UK, 2019
Selected for Reuters Pictures of the Year collection, 2017
Two honourable mentions at the Moscow International Foto Awards, 2016
Special Prize by Jury of the 11th DAYS JAPAN International Photojournalism Awards, 2015
Gold in the Culture Category of the China International Press Photo Contest, 2015
Selected for Reuters Pictures of the Year collection, 2014
Part of the Russian Reporter Magazine second place under the Editing Portfolio Magazine theme for the Pictures of the Year International, 2014
Shortlisted for the German Hansel Mieth Photo Reportage prize, 2013
Languages spoken
English, Italian, Swahili, French