Covering the chaos of the Libyan civil war in 2011 transformed Bryan Denton. He began the war as a promising 27-year-old photojournalist and provided some of the most vivid coverage of the conflict for The New York Times. But it’s not his personal successes that stick with Mr. Denton — it’s the victims he photographed, and the deaths of several colleagues, especially his friend Chris Hondros.  Next month, Mr. Denton will receive an award that has special meaning for him: the 2016 Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award.  “It’s nice to be honored, but this is an award that motivates me,” he said. “I don’t feel like patting myself on the back for receiving this. For me this is like a kick in the ass — a reason to continue to push harder in my work and to re-examine and redouble my efforts to get better in telling stories that allow people to connect more with what’s going on in the world.”  Chris Hondros was killed in Libya in 2011.  The award was created to honor Mr. Hondros, who was killed in Misurata in April 2011 along with the photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington. Mr. Denton will receive a $20,000 grant, while Kiana Hayeri, 27, earned the fund’s emerging photojournalist award, which carries a $5,000 grant to support documentary projects.  Ms. Hayeri was born in Iran, went to college in Canada and is now based in Kabul, Afghanistan. She was first published on Lens in 2011, and her photographs of young women in Tehran living different lives in public and in private were also featured on Lens in 2012.  Mr. Denton often crossed paths with Mr. Hondros while covering the Libyan conflict, and had been in Misurata right before his two colleagues were killed during intense fighting between government forces and rebels. Mr. Denton, working alongside the Times correspondent Chris Chivers, covered the battlefront, coming uncomfortably close to forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Their vivid coverage brought attention to a part of the war that had been difficult for foreign journalists to gain access to. After three days they boarded a boat back to Benghazi. Minutes earlier, several photographers, including Mr. Hondros and Mr. Hetherington, arrived in Misurata on that same boat. Mr. Hondros and Mr. Hetherington were killed by rocket-propelled grenades the next day.  Mr. Chivers wrote the article about their deaths for The Times, and he and Mr. Denton helped get their bodies returned to their families.  Their deaths affected him deeply, Mr. Denton said, and for a while made it difficult for him to continue covering the war. Still, he and Mr. Chivers returned to Misurata a few days later to follow up on their earlier reports.  “A big part of what drove me to keep covering that story was I believed that continuing their work was a way of honoring Chris and Tim,” Mr. Denton said.  Since then, Mr. Denton, now 32, has covered dozens of stories for the Times. Last year, he and his wife, Maria Abi-Habib, a Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, had their first child. Mr. Denton has taken a lot of time off and hewed closer to their home in Lebanon.  “I feel like the true commodity now in this life is time,” he said. “My project for the last year has been figuring out how do I love my child, my family, and do the work I love to do.”  “I hopefully have a lot of time that I have to split up on different things,” he added. “Hondros didn’t have enough time. Period.”  The awards will be presented on May 4 at a benefit reception at the Aperture Gallery in New York. The event includes a silent auction of photographs that runs online from April 22.  Follow @hondrosfund, @jamesestrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook and Instagram.
Bryan Denton, who was transformed by his coverage of the Libyan conflict, has been named the recipient of an award honoring his fallen comrade, the photographer Chris Hondros.