Times staffer's winning photo "like a painting"

Seattle Times photographer Thomas James Hurst, who has traveled the world as a photojournalist, won first prize in Editor & Publisher's seventh annual Photos of the Year contest.

The award, announced Monday on the Web site of E&P, a trade publication, honors Hurst for a photo of a Pakistani family gathered around a cooking fire in a livestock stable after being displaced by a massive earthquake. It was published Dec. 18 on the front page of The Seattle Times.

Hurst and staff reporter Janet I. Tu went to Pakistan for 10 days last year with a local Pakistani organization that was adopting villages needing to be rebuilt after the earthquake. An estimated 80,000 people were killed and 3.5 million left homeless in the earthquake.

Jim Simon, Times metro editor, said the newspaper's coverage grew out of a desire to chronicle the efforts of local Pakistani-Americans who were returning to assist in the relief efforts there.

"That approach allowed Thomas and Janet to bring the struggles of life in a small, wrecked Pakistani village after the earthquake to our readers in an intimate and very personal way," he said.

Tu said she was thrilled for Hurst: "The photos he took in Pakistan really helped our readers identify with the villagers who had been devastated by the earthquake. Beyond that, many of the photos stand on their own as works of art. They are luminous."

Hurst said he and Tu had been looking for a family to tell the story of what was happening and that Tu found the family he photographed.

"I started hanging around and observing what their day was about," said Hurst, 35. "Because of the cold weather, they started a cooking fire in a livestock stable. I sat quietly in the shadows and recognized it as a nice moment."

Hurst said what he likes about the photograph, one of thousands he took in Pakistan, are the rich colors magnified by the natural light coming through the doorway. "I thought it was a really beautiful photo," he said. "I thought the image was unique."

Hurst, who has worked at The Times for seven years, grew up in Mill Valley, Calif., and first picked up a camera, an old Nikkormat, at the age of 21 when he went to Bosnia in 1992. After visiting Bosnia a second time in 1993, he decided to study photojournalism at San Francisco State University.

During winter and summer breaks, he traveled to Haiti, Afghanistan and Rwanda and worked as a staff photographer for The Boston Globe before moving to Seattle.

Hurst said he was excited to be chosen to accompany Tu to Pakistan because he'd been there as a freelancer in 1996.

"Thomas was an easy choice for this assignment," said Fred Nelson, the photo editor who assigned Hurst to the project. "He had been to Pakistan before and is streetwise about getting things done in a variety of cultures and hostile situations. Thomas has a great respect and empathy for the way people live, wherever they are, and that respect is easily visible in this photograph."

Denise Clifton, who designed the front page where the picture appeared, said she'd never seen a newspaper image like Hurst's. "It looks like a painting," she said.

"I knew the image would stand out," Hurst said.

Hurst has also won three World Press Awards and also has been honored by The Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Prize-winning photographs in the E&P competition were selected from hundreds of entries.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com