ABOUT
Dieu-Nalio Chery is a freelance photojournalist based in Michigan working for The New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post, and The Associated Press.He was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal 2019 from the Overseas Press Club for "best published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise for his coverage of the political crisis, and violent upheaval and human rights abuses in Haiti. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer finalist in breaking news photography that year.
Chery was born and grew up in Haiti and started working in his uncle's photo studio in Port-au-Prince when he was 20. When former President Jean Bertrand Aristide went into exile in 2004, Chery decided to document the human rights abuses and social injustices against people living in the slums.
After the 2010 devastating earthquake in Haiti, there was a major increase in murder, kidnappings, and violence. When Chery observed how authorities treated the victims, he decided to pursue a career in photojournalism and began working for the Associated Press.
For the next eleven years, Chery documented the profound beauty, searing pain, and continued upheaval in his homeland for AP. Many of his images have become iconic records of Haiti in the 21st century. Chery has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photo Journalism, and the Atlanta Photojournalism seminar. He attended the Magnum Foundation Photography and Human Rights workshop at New York University for two months in 2015.
In 2021-2022, he was in residency at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is a current fellow at City of Asylum/Detroit.