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COVID-19 in India

Danish Siddiqui’s Photos That Powerfully Captured Critical Moments in India

Danish Siddiqui’s India photographs record grief, care, ritual and public crisis. Here are the documented Pulitzer images, correct credits and the wider context of his career.

By ThatPainter Team 5 min read
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Danish Siddiqui’s photographs of India turn breaking news into human-scale eyewitness records: a family member mourned outside a hospital, a patient receiving oxygen in a gurdwara parking lot, and cremation grounds overwhelmed during the country’s 2021 COVID-19 surge. Those images formed part of Reuters’ team-winning 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The award was shared by Siddiqui, Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave, so each photograph must be credited to its individual maker.

The photographs from India’s 2021 COVID-19 crisis

The Pulitzer Prize gallery documents Siddiqui’s work during India’s devastating second wave. Its captions place each scene in a specific location and date, preserving the circumstances as carefully as the image itself.

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Date and place What the photograph shows Credit
April 12, 2021 — Haridwar A Naga Sadhu places a mask across his face before entering the Ganges during the Shahi Snan at the Kumbh Mela. Danish Siddiqui
April 22, 2021 — New Delhi Residences surround the grounds of a crematorium during a mass cremation for COVID-19 victims. Danish Siddiqui
April 23, 2021 — New Delhi A man grieves outside the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital casualty ward after a family member is declared dead. Danish Siddiqui
April 24, 2021 — Ghaziabad Manoj Kumar waves to his mother as she receives oxygen in the parking lot of a gurdwara. Danish Siddiqui
April 29, 2021 — New Delhi A female patient is attended by staff inside the Holy Family Hospital emergency ward. Danish Siddiqui
May 4, 2021 — New Delhi Pranav Mishra kneels toward his mother’s body before her cremation. Danish Siddiqui
May 6, 2021 — New Delhi Urns containing ashes await immersion at a crematorium during a national lockdown. Danish Siddiqui

Together, these captions move between wide scenes of public emergency and close encounters with grief, care and ritual. The Pulitzer citation described the Reuters work as balancing intimacy and devastation while giving viewers a heightened sense of place.

Why the Reuters package needs precise credits

“The Pulitzer-winning photos” is often used as shorthand for the entire Reuters project, but it does not mean every image was made by Siddiqui. The official gallery credits photographers separately.

  • The April 30, 2021 Ghaziabad photograph of Manisha Bashu pressing her father’s chest while he receives oxygen is credited to Adnan Abidi.
  • The April 8 vaccination-drive image at a brick kiln is credited to Amit Dave.
  • The June 10 photograph of a shepherd receiving a vaccination is credited to Sanna Irshad Mattoo.

Those distinctions matter for captions, exhibitions and reproductions. A package credit can identify the Reuters team, but a published image credit should identify the photographer named in the Pulitzer gallery.

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His India coverage extended beyond the pandemic

The Danish Siddiqui Foundation archive describes a much wider body of Indian work. Its categories include protest and dissent, farmers, migrant workers, Mumbai street life, migration and daily life. These photographs place the COVID-19 images within a continuing record of how people work, travel, gather, demonstrate and endure.

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The Foundation says its archive contains more than 120 photographs and links to Siddiqui’s Reuters portfolio. Those figures are the Foundation’s own published descriptions, not an independent count. It also presents the career summary “2× Pulitzer Prize,” “15+ Years in the field” and “20+ Countries covered.” The two Pulitzer awards are independently documented as the 2018 Reuters team prize for Rohingya refugee coverage and the 2022 Reuters team prize for India’s COVID-19 coverage; the other totals should be understood as Foundation figures.

A career shaped by conflict, displacement and ordinary life

Siddiqui joined Reuters in 2010 and covered major events across Asia and the Middle East. His wider work includes the Rohingya refugee crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hong Kong protests and the Nepal earthquakes, as well as India’s protests, migration stories and everyday scenes. He shared the 2018 Feature Photography Pulitzer as part of the Reuters team documenting Rohingya refugees.

This range helps explain why his India photographs do not read as a single disaster series. They combine crisis reporting with attention to places, gestures and routines that continue around the crisis.

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What the photographs show about witnessing

The documented images repeatedly put public systems and private experience in the same frame: hospital wards and a mourner outside them; a gurdwara providing oxygen and a son waving to his mother; cremation grounds bordered by ordinary homes. The captions establish what happened and where, while the pictures preserve the people’s presence within those events.

The Foundation archive attributes this statement to Siddiqui: “I have never worked for any praise or recognition. When you have the passion to genuinely make a difference, you invariably end up doing good work.” The archive does not give an original interview date or recording reference, so the quotation is best cited to the Foundation archive itself.

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The 2023 Danish Siddiqui photo book

Kehrer Verlag published the English-language hardcover Danish Siddiqui in 2023. It is a career-spanning collection of more than ten years of Reuters work, not an India-only volume.

Publisher details Value
Format Hardcover
Size 30 × 24 cm
Pages 256
Illustrations 154 color illustrations
ISBN 978-3-96900-080-9
Scope More than ten years of Siddiqui’s Reuters work

Journalism.co.uk reported 150 photographs in the book. That number should not be treated as interchangeable with the publisher’s 154 color illustrations, since books may count photographs and illustrations differently. Selected press-kit images include pandemic scenes from the Kumbh Mela and a Ghaziabad gurdwara.

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For readers seeking a physical Danish Siddiqui photo book or a broader Danish Siddiqui photography collection, this volume is the clearest documented option. Availability and editions can change, so verify the current listing before buying. The publisher’s reproduction permissions for review materials do not constitute general republication rights, and Foundation images remain Reuters copyright and all rights reserved.

How to read and credit these photographs responsibly

  1. Identify the image in the official Pulitzer gallery. Use its date, place and caption rather than relying on a generic package description.
  2. Credit the named photographer. Do not assign a colleague’s image to Siddiqui simply because both appear in the Reuters award package.
  3. Keep the event context with the image. “New Delhi, April 22, 2021” communicates more than a caption that says only “COVID-19 in India.”
  4. Check rights before reproduction. Award-gallery visibility, Foundation publication or a publisher press kit does not automatically grant reuse permission.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Danish Siddiqui photograph is most associated with India’s second COVID-19 wave?

His April 22, 2021 photograph of residences surrounding a New Delhi crematorium during a mass cremation is among the best-known images in the Pulitzer-documented series.

Did Danish Siddiqui photograph every image in Reuters’ 2022 Pulitzer package?

No. The prize recognized a Reuters team. Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo and Amit Dave made other photographs in the official gallery, which credits each image individually.

Is the book Danish Siddiqui focused only on India?

No. Kehrer Verlag’s 2023 hardcover spans more than ten years of Siddiqui’s Reuters work across multiple regions, although it includes important India and pandemic photographs.

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