At the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, last September, World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch announced that they have set up a joint initiative to honor the late Tim Hetherington. The deadline for applications is October 15. The first recipient of the Tim Hetherington grant will be announced on 7 November.

Left: Battle Company / Afghanistan Fire during an attack on the Restrepo bunker; selected for American Photography 24 and awarded World Press Photo of the Year, 2007. Right: Sleeping Soldiers, one from a series shot while Hetherington was embedded with troops in Afghanistan, selected for AP 25. Both images were originally published in Vanity Fair.

Photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was killed when a group of journalists came under fire during fighting between rebels and General Gaddafi’s forces in Misrata, Libya in April 2011. In the same attack, photojournalist Chris Hondros was killed, and Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown were injured.

Tim’s life came to an abrupt end at the age of 40, but his legacy as a photojournalist and filmmaker is still taking shape. To celebrate Tim’s commitment to finding new ways to tell compelling stories about politics, conflict and the human experience, and to relay these stories to a wide audience, a new grant has been established. The Tim Hetherington Grant is a joint initiative of World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch and has been set up with the support of Tim’s parents, Alastair and Judith Hetherington.

In 2008, Tim talked about his mission after his picture of a US soldier was selected the World Press Photo of the Year 2007:
“Underpinning my work is a concern with human rights and analyzing political ideas, with thinking about history and politics. It’s also about witnessing, about telling stories. Photography to me is a way of exploring the world, creating narratives, and communicating with as many people as possible…I am interested in working across a broad platform, in both screen based media and the print media.” (Interview in the 2008 World Press Photo yearbook)

World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch, for whose publications Tim was a regular contributor, will join a distinguished panel of judges to select the recipient of the first annual Tim Hetherington Grant. The annual grant, worth € 20.000, will be awarded to a photographer to complete an existing project on a human rights theme.

The members of the selection committee are: Christopher Anderson, photographer Magnum, James Brabazon, journalist and documentary filmmaker, Veronica Matushaj, director of photography Human Rights Watch, Michiel Munneke, managing director World Press Photo, Jamie Wellford, senior photo editor Newsweek, and Secretary Adriaan Monshouwer, founder Picture Inside.

For more information and to apply, click here.