Richard Ellis
Charleston
Richard is a three-time Pulitzer Prize nominated photographer and founder of the first digital online news photo agency that became Getty Images News Photos in 1999. Richard joined Reuters as a staff photographer in Hong Kong in early 1985 covering major stories around Asia before being posted to New Delhi as the first Reuters Chief Photographer for South Asia where he covered the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, civil war in Sri Lanka, uprisings in Nepal, The Punjab, Pakistan, Bangladesh and a variety of conflicts around the region. As part of the Reuters team covering the Tiananmen Square massacre he was nominated for his first Pulitzer. In the aftermath of Tiananmen he was moved to Beijing where he spent two years covering the crackdown and response to the protests. Richard spent 4-months covering the First Gulf War outside the restricted coverage. In part because of this coverage he was nominated a second time for the Pulitzer as part of the Reuters coverage of the war. Following Beijing Richard was moved to London as the Chief Photographer for the UK and Ireland where he continued covering major events while organizing the first domestic photo operation for Reuters. His last posting was to Moscow where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union and the many wars and conflicts spurred by the turmoil. While covering the overthrow of the Communist government in Afghanistan Richard captured a series of pictures of an Afghan Secret Policemen being executed by the Mujahedin that resulted in his third and only solo Pulitzer nomination.
After leaving Reuters in 1994 Richard worked for US News & World Report as a contract photographer in Moscow then returned to Washington where he covered the Presidency of Bill Clinton as the Sygma News Photographer.
Richard now lives in Charleston, South Carolina where he offers workshops and seminars and runs a photo studio offering editorial, portrait, commercial and travel photography.
- Breaking news
- Conflict
- Corporate
- Editorial
- Environment
- Events
- Landscape
- Military embed
- Portrait