Vadim Ghirda

He joined the AP in 1990 at the age of 18 as communism was collapsing across Central and Eastern Europe. Ghirda started by covering the complex social and political turmoil generated by the transition from totalitarian rule to democracy. In Romania, civil unrest, miner riots, widespread high-level corruption, the declaration of independence of Moldova from the Soviet Union and a secession war in the Trans Dniester region, in Ukraine the protests before the toppling of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, all in the early nineties.

In the late nineties, he covered the break up of Yugoslavia, the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, the conflict in Bosnia, the anti-Milosevic protests in Belgrade, the Kosovo Crisis and the war in Macedonia. Ghirda covered conflicts in the Middle East between 2001 and 2005 in Israel and Iraq. Recently he covered Russia's takeover of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the US-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in the Syrian town of Kobani.

Ghirda works in all formats, one of the latest project is an investigation into the high risk nuclear material smuggling in Moldova, led by AP Washington based reporter Desmond Butler. Ghirda's work received awards like Associated Press Managing Editors Award in 2000, 2001 and 2003, Editor and Publisher Photo Contest First Prize 2001, National Headliner Awards First Prize 2002, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar First Prize 2007 and 2015, Clarion Prize 2008, US National Press Photographers Association 1st Prize 2013. Vadim Ghirda graduated from the Civil Engineering University of Bucharest in 1995.