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Cheryl Diaz Meyer is a Filipina American Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and visual editor based in Washington, D.C. who specializes in editorial and commercial visual storytelling; she is also a videographer, producer and editor, writer and public speaker.

 

Cheryl is best known for her iconic coverage of the Iraq War and her insightful documentation of women facing adversity across the globe. The “eloquent photographs depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq” garnered her and colleague David Leeson the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. Her pictures were also awarded the Visa D’Or in 2003 at the Visa Pour L’Image photo festival in France. Her work has received accolades from the White House News Photographers Association, Photographer of the Year International, National Press Photographers Association, and many others.

 

Most recently, Cheryl’s work on the Last Living Comfort Women of the Philippines, published on National Public Radio (npr.org), was awarded the prestigious Feature Photography Award by the Overseas Press Club and the Edward R. Murrow Radio Network Digital Award.

 

Cheryl began covering war zones immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, where she documented the earliest phase of the war in Afghanistan, witnessing the seminal battles in the Taliban-stronghold of Konduz. Her photos from Afghanistan received numerous accolades including the John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club. Cheryl was a pioneer in both Afghanistan and Iraq—one of only a handful of female photojournalists who covered the initial days of both the Afghan and Iraq Wars.

 

Born in the Philippines, Cheryl traveled to her country of birth to photograph famed boxer Manny Pacquiao as he prepared to fight Keith Thurman in Las Vegas, and to Germany to follow a convicted double murderer as he was released to freedom after 30 years of imprisonment in Virginia. Cheryl’s projects include coverage in Indonesia on the violence between Muslims and Christians, and in Guatemala on a country healing from 36 years of civil strife. In Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, she documented the end of the Cold War. She has also worked in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, Kuwait, Bahrain, Mexico and France among others.

 

Cheryl’s photographs are exhibited worldwide including the Newseum’s Pulitzer Prize Exhibit and were exhibited in the Indian Photography Festival in Hyderabad. Her work has been published in most major media outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, China Daily and in Life, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Newsweek Japan, Der Spiegel, Le MondeMarie Claire and Cosmopolitan magazines.

 

Her work is also featured in several books: on the cover of The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz, in Desert Diaries by Corbis, The War in Iraq by Life, A Table in the Presence by Lt. Carey Cash and Reporting from the Front by Judith Sylvester. Apple, The History Channel, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and CSPAN have featured her work and interviews. She has contributed articles to The Dallas Morning News, Harvard University’s Nieman Reports, as well as Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism.

 

Cheryl works as the acting Deputy Director of Photography for the Minneapolis Star Tribune based in Washington. She previously worked as the Visual Editor for McClatchy’s Washington Bureau where she was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their work on the Panama Papers, an exposé of history’s largest data leak of over 214,000 offshore entities.

 

She worked as a senior staff photographer at The Dallas Morning News in Texas where in 2006 she was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

 

Cheryl lectures widely, including at the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Smithsonian Institution. She has been a guest speaker at the Danish Union of Press Photographers, the Poynter Institute, the National Press Photographers Association, Leadership Women America, and at numerous journalism events. She has served on the faculty of the Eddie Adams Workshop and the Mountain Peoples Photo Workshops and has taught Photojournalism at the University of Maryland and Wake Forest University.

 

She was honored in 2004 with a special invitation by then-President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to meet with her and participate in the country’s Independence Day Parade in Manila. But her main claim to fame stems from sharing — and surviving — a broken and lurching parade float in the rain with Pacquiao and former Olympic winner and Taekwondo master Monsour del Rosario. 

 

Currently, Cheryl works as the acting Deputy Director of Photography for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, based in Washington, DC, where she helps lead a team of 15 highly skilled photographers. She also worked as a staff photographer at the Star Tribune at the beginning of her career.

 

Cheryl graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Minnesota-Duluth and with a Bachelor of Arts in Photojournalism from Western Kentucky University.

 

Cheryl’s wanderlust was fed by a childhood living in several countries: the Philippines, Japan, Germany, France and the United States. Aside from English, she is proficient in Tagalog and Bikol (Filipino languages), German, and has working proficiency in French and Spanish.

 

Cheryl is available for portrait, commercial and reportage assignments globally.

Photo by Conchitina Miguel

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