This photojournalist got his start in Fresno. He just won a prestigious $100,000 prize
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
The San Joaquin Valley’s fields, laced with endless rows of crops, are home to immigrant farmers from all over the world who have brought their traditions and practices with them.
But to Fresno native Ryan Christopher Jones, immigrant farmers’ stories remained largely untold. That’s when he decided to write about the Punjabi Sikh community, whose agricultural roots stretch back 900 years.
“Growing up in central California, I knew that Punjabi Sikhs were farmers and I always wanted to explore the community a little bit more,” said Jones, a freelance photojournalist who reported a story on an immigrant farmer for The New York Times in 2021. “I wanted to challenge the way that people think about farmers, what farmers look like and what the communities are actually like.”
It’s just one of several stories that the Heising-Simons Foundation is honoring Thursday by awarding Jones the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which recognizes freelance print, digital, audio, or television journalists who report deep and thorough stories on underrepresented communities in the U.S.
He is one of two journalists who will be granted the $100,000 award, which was created in 2018 to help fund freelance journalists’ work. The finalists were chosen by a panel of ten judges, including journalists from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, NPR and NBC News.
Jones, who is Mexican-American, told The Bee on Wednesday that he feels “humbled” and “very lucky” to be able to use his skills as a photojournalist to tell visual stories about vulnerable and underrepresented communities.
“I’m still shocked,” he said. “To win an award for covering parts of my own community means everything.”
Jones’ stories highlight the experiences of often-overlooked communities, including the country’s Latino and undocumented immigrants. His work is heavily influenced by his own Latino identity and explores issues related to race and the complex relationship between Mexican and American identities. He’s also reported in-depth stories about the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City and Boston, the opioid overdose crisis, and Mexican-American economic mobility.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, ProPublica and The Washington Post, among other outlets.
“My mission has been to cover these vulnerable communities with a kind of grace and compassion that shows that yes, they may be suffering, they may be in a vulnerable place – but that’s not the entirety of their lives,” he said. “Even when people are suffering, there are moments of joy and of grace and I want to try to find those.”
Jeffrey Furticella is a photo editor at The New York Times who has worked with Jones on several projects over the past five years, including a visual story in 2019 about a Mexican man living in an underground apartment in Queens. Furticella said he is “thrilled” for Jones, who he considers to be an “incredibly empathetic” journalist.
“This recognition is a perfect representation of the work that he’s done, the thoughtful and empathetic approach that he has, and his curiosity about the world around him,” Furticella said. “He’s really committed to telling stories and bringing people’s experiences to light in thoughtful ways.”
The award was created with the mission of recognizing and encouraging journalists to spend time on long-form, narrative, or in-depth reporting focused on generating a greater understanding of often underrepresented or misrepresented groups. Journalists are nominated from a pool of more than 150 leaders in journalism from across the country.
Jones, who is currently based in California and New York, grew up in Fresno. Jones picked up photography in 2008 and started snapping shots on assignment for The Fresno Bee, his hometown paper. The experience was life-changing and inspired him to pursue journalism as a career, he said.
“That changed everything for me and opened up my eyes to what journalism can do and what it means to actually cover one’s own community,” he said.
Jones said he plans on using part of the money to help him pay for a doctorate degree in anthropology and wants to set aside a few thousand dollars to create a small grant for financially strapped journalists of color.
“We do this work because it’s important and because we love it,” he said. “We don’t do it to make a ton of money. I know exactly what it feels like just to have someone help you out. I don’t know the timing of it, but I do plan on creating something to benefit the Mexican-American journalism community.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 5:00 AM.