Kirill Kudryavtsev, an AFP photographer based in Moscow, won an Excellence Award in the “Space on Earth” category for his photo of a women walking under snowfall in front of a Soyuz rocket installed as a monument in Baikonur city, near the Russian leased Kazakh Baikonur cosmodrome on December 05, 2021.

The series of photographs illustrates the catastrophic floods in Europe in July 2021 that killed 190 people in Europe, 160 of them in Germany.

Starting with the elections in Uganda, moving to the Kimana Sanctuary in Kenya, stepping into the Tigray region of Ethiopia, crossing continents to cover both Olympics and Paralympics in his home country, Japan, before returning to Kenya; Yasuyoshi Chiba recalls a year full of rich experiences and stories in a context of uncertainty, as he tells The Guardian:

David Gray has been honored three times for his coverage of the 2021 Australian Open tennis tournament.

Polka Award for photographer of the year 2021

Lava from the eruption reached the suburbs of Goma, destroying 17 villages, with 20,000 people left homeless and 400,000 evacuated.

This awarded image is also part of AFP’s 120 Photos Of The Year selection.