bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Kylie Knott

Telling the human stories through images is what Nicole Tung does best.
The Hong Kong-born freelance photojournalist, best known for her award-winning work focusing on the humanitarian impact of war, is based in Istanbul, Turkey. The Middle East is a key focus of her work.
Since 2012, she has documented the war in Syria, including the December 2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and other major events such as the 2011 revolution in Libya that led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the Arab spring protests in Egypt.
Tung has also covered the treatment of Native American war veterans, child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and the Ukraine war for major international media outlets such as The New York Times.

But her series as the laureate of the 15th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award captured a different kind of war – one between humans and the ocean.
Open to photographers of all nationalities, the award, established by the French entrepreneur and art collector Édouard Carmignac, recognises investigative photo reportage on human rights violations and geostrategic issues.
As its laureate, Tung was supported by the foundation during her nine-month stay in Southeast Asia to capture the human and environmental violations linked to illegal fishing and overfishing, and to expose the complex dynamics of industrial fishing and its consequences for marine ecosystems and coastal communities.
Working in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, Tung explored issues such as how geopolitical pressures have affected local fishers and the working conditions of migrant labourers at sea.

She also looked into the shark trade, where meat is sold locally while fins and bones are exported, mostly to China and Hong Kong, for use in cosmetics and traditional medicine.
“I also went to Palawan in the Philippines and looked at how fishermen there are losing about 50 per cent of their income or giving up altogether because of China’s increasing dominance in the Philippines’ fishing grounds,” Tung says.
She says the issues she touched on deserve attention.
“Most people don’t know that we only eat a quarter of the seafood that is caught; the rest of it is trash fish. It’s by-catch.
“This has a devastating impact on marine ecosystems, just like the kinds of fishing gear that’s used, bottom trawling being one of the worst,” she says, referring to a destructive fishing method where a large, weighted net is dragged along the ocean floor to catch marine animals that live on or near the seabed.
The sea is difficult to police, she adds. “There is no way of enforcing any laws when it’s happening out in the deep sea.”

Tung’s interest in photography started at age 15 when her grandfather gifted her a Leica camera.
“I started taking pictures in Hong Kong, mostly at underground music shows,” she says. “In my first year of university, when I was 18 or 19, I had been reading a lot about the background of the Bosnian war and wanted to go and see for myself what it was like in the post-war period.”
During a term break while studying at New York University, she went backpacking across Bosnia.
“I think that was a formative experience in the sense that I met a lot of people who shared their experiences of a war that I had read so much about,” she says.
People also shared stories about the genocide in Srebrenica, a small mountain town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, in July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were massacred during the Bosnian War.
“I realised then the kind of power of being able to speak to people and use the camera as a way of documenting what I was seeing,” she says, adding that a pivotal point was meeting widows who, 10 years earlier, had fled Srebrenica.
“They were still living in a displaced persons camp, and meeting them was very significant because they shared their stories.”

Documenting the reality of conflict is crucial, says Tung, who wants people to emotionally engage with her images and not become “fatigued” by them.
“We’re seeing so much horror on the news and on social media, but I think the power of photography can cut through the apathy and people becoming numb to it,” she says.
Navigating ethical dilemmas is part of the job, Tung says, adding that she leans heavily on her instincts to guide her through sensitive situations.
“There are a lot of ethical dilemmas that come up in the field that you have to make split decisions on. Usually it’s just trusting your gut and knowing that something is worth documenting, but doing it in a very sensitive way.”
Tung’s work is on show at the Visa pour l’Image festival in Perpignan, France until Sep 14.


Singaporean artist Ming Wong reimagines a saint and LGBTQ icon at London gallery

How Lyla Marsol and Anouck Mutsaerts grew jewellery brand Aglagla out of colourful beads

Author Hu Anyan on work, writing and overcoming  an inferiority complex

In conversation: Michele Chu and Nicholas Wong talk artistic mediums and pressures

Hong Kong photojournalist Nicole Tung on her award-winning work in Asia and beyond

Filipino fishermen unload catches of Yellowfin tuna, Bigeye tuna, and Blue Marlin, after being at sea for approximately one month, at General Santos fish port, the Philippines, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Photo: Nicole Tung for Fondation Carmignac

Award-winning Hong Kong photojournalist Nicole Tung shares why, when it comes to documenting humanitarian and environmental violations around the world, “trusting your gut” is key. Photo: C McGrath

An injured man is treated at a field hospital in Ukraine’s south in a photo by Nicole Tung. Photo: Instagram/nicoletung

A fisherman unloads fish after being at sea for about a month, at a port in the Philippines, in May 2025, in an image from Nicole Tung’s project on overfishing in Southeast Asia. Photo: Nicole Tung for Fondation Carmignac

A photo from Nicole Tung’s project on overfishing in Southeast Asia. Photo: Instagram/allaboutphotocom

Tung at a refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan, in 2019.

Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola talk about Marc by Sofia fashion documentary

Designer Marc Jacobs and filmmaker Sofia Coppola pose on the red carpet for the screening of the movie Marc by Sofia out of competition, at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, on September 2, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Marc Jacobs is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs. Photo: EPA

Jacobs and Coppola have been friends for years. Photo: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP

From Syria to Iraq, Save the Children centenary photo show reveals indomitable spirit of kids in war zones

Children play in the courtyard at the heavily damaged Hawari Bu Medyan School in Raqqa, Syria, on May 10, 2018. The school is located opposite a building that was used by ISIS’s religious police, the Hisba, and was also the site of intense fighting during the offensive to retake the city from the extremist group. Photo: Nicole Tung

A boy carries a white flag indicating he is not a combatant while feeding from Mosul as Iraqi forces pushed deeper in the ISIS territory, near Gogjali, Iraq, on November 7, 2016. Over 100,000 civilians have fled from Mosul since the start of the offensive in October 2016 to retake the Iraqi city back from the hands of ISIS, which has controlled it for over two years.

HK-born photojournalist Nicole Tung. Photo Kylie Knott

ONE TIME USE ONLY ONE TIME USE ONLY Young boys swim and play in a fountain in a park in Raqqa, Syria, on Friday, May 11, 2018. Public parks in Raqqa were used as impromptu burial sites for those killed in executions carried out by ISIS during their reign, or airstrikes by the coalition during the offensive to oust the extremist group from the capital of their so-called caliphate. Many parks still contain the remains of hundreds of people, as well as unexploded ordinance. But as life comes back to this eastern Syrian city, rather than be deterred, civilians are eager to have some semblance of normal life and enjoy their freedom outdoors.

Save the Childrenâs founder, Eglantyne Jebb. At the beginning of the 20th century, Eglantyne Jebb had a vision: to achieve and protect the rights of children worlwide. She was driven by the belief that all children - whoever they are, wherever they are - have the right to a healthy, happy, fulfilling life. And the belief that change is within reach - if we have courage, determination, imagination and good organisation. Her vision has survived into the second decade of the 21st century.

ONE TIME USE ONLY ONE TIME USE ONLY Schoolchildren exit a bus in western Mosul, Iraq, on Monday, November 6, 2017. Since Mosul was declared liberated by the Iraqi forces four months ago, some schools have reopened in the city where many children have missed years of their education.

In April, 2019, HK photojournalist Nicole Tung visited the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, the world’s largest refugee camp for Syrians

ONE TIME USE ONLY ONE TIM EUSE ONLY Ahmed, 12, from Sheikh Fares neighborhood, waits with his uncle, right, near the body of his father who was killed by a shell in the Sha'ar neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, on Friday, August 24, 2012. Ahmed, who saw his father die, was also injured in his back by shrapnel.

A boy walks through a street near his home in Qayyarah, Iraq, on November 10, 2016, as an oil well burns nearby. Many streets and neighbourhoods in Qayyarah at the time looked apocalyptic, yet children could still be seen everywhere playing outside. Photo: Nicole Tung

How accurate is 2024 film Civil War in its depiction of photojournalists? Pulitzer Prize winner Carolyn Cole breaks it down

Kirsten Dunst in a still from Civil War. Photo: TNS

Photographer Carolyn Cole, who has covered her share of wars, has offered her thoughts on what Alex Garland’s movie Civil War gets right and wrong about photojournalism. Photo: Getty Images

Cailee Spaeny in a still from Civil War. Photo: TNS

Spaeny and Dunst in a still from Civil War. Photo: TNS

Kirsten Dunst in a still from Civil War. Photo: AP

1980s Hong Kong pop idol Danny Chan’s bittersweet success story: his talent, fame, the tabloid rumours, his retirement and early death

Singer Danny Chan Pak-keung puts one of his albums in a time capsule in 1991. Photo: SCMP

Danny Chan was one of Hong Hong’s “Three Kings and A Queen of Cantopop” in the 1980s, with fellow idols Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui and Alan Tam. Photo: SCMP

Yvonne Siu, project manager of TVB, presents a souvenir to Danny Chan in 1984. Photo: SCMP

Chan singing at his own birthday party in 1988. Photo: SCMP

Chan (left) and Jacky Cheung Hok-yau at the Top Ten Pop Stars Election in 1987. Photo: SCMP

There were numerous rumours about a relationship between Pansy Ho and Chan. Photo: Weibo

Chan performing at a concert to promote Aids awareness in 1990. Photo: SCMP

Chan was taken to Queen Mary Hospital after collapsing at home on May 19, 1992. Photo: SCMP

Flanked by singer Anita Mui Yim-fong and actor Chow Yun-fat, Danny Chan’s older brother Chan Pak-ling carries his younger brother’s picture at the singer’s funeral in 1993. Photo: SCMP

Lifestyle

Arts

The 15th Carmignac Photojournalism Award winner talks about documenting everything from the war in Syria to illegal fishing in Thailand


The 15th Carmignac Photojournalism Award winner talks about documenting everything from the war in Syria to illegal fishing in Thailand.


Hong Kong photojournalist Nicole Tung on her award-winning work in Asia and beyond

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The 15th Carmignac Photojournalism Award winner talks about documenting everything from the war in Syria to illegal fishing in Thailand

The 15th Carmignac Photojournalism Award winner talks about documenting everything from the war in Syria to illegal fishing in Thailand