Cheryl Diaz Meyer
Pulitzer-Prize winner Cheryl Diaz Meyer is an independent photojournalist based in Washington, D.C. She is best known for her coverage of the Iraq War and her insightful documentation of women facing adversity across the globe. The “eloquent photographs depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq” garnered her and colleague David Leeson the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. Her pictures were also awarded the Visa D’Or in 2003 at the Visa Pour L’Image photo festival in France.
Immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Cheryl covered the earliest phase of the war in Afghanistan, witnessing the first battles that defeated the Taliban. Her photos from Afghanistan received numerous honors including the John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club. Cheryl was a pioneer in both Afghanistan and Iraq—according to the Marines, Cheryl was the first woman to cross into Iraq during the invasion, and one of only a handful of female photojournalists who covered the initial days of both the Afghan and Iraq Wars.
In January, Cheryl’s self-assigned project on the Rohingya Crisis was honored by the White House News Photographers Association with a sweep of the entire International Category in its annual photo contest.
Cheryl has traveled to the Philippines and Indonesia to photograph the effects of violence between Muslims and Christians, and to Guatemala to document a country healing from 36 years of civil strife. She has also photographed stories in Jordan about refugee women turning to prostitution for survival, to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Slovakia and Russia.
Cheryl’s photographs are exhibited worldwide including in the Newseum’s Pulitzer Prize Exhibit in Washington, D.C. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, China Daily, Life, Newsweek and Der Spiegel magazines, among others. Her work is also featured in several books: on the cover of The Long Road Home, in Desert Diaries by Corbis, The War in Iraq by Life and A Table in the Presence by Lt. Carey Cash. Apple, The History Channel, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and CSPAN have featured her work and interviews. She has contributed articles to The Dallas Morning News, Harvard University’s Nieman Reports, as well as Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism.
Cheryl worked as a senior staff photographer for nearly a decade at The Dallas Morning News and for five years at the Star Tribune in Minnesota. For several years, Cheryl stayed home to raise her daughter full time, before transitioning back to work as Visual Editor at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. At McClatchy, she was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the Panama Papers exposé. She has since heeded the call of the camera, returning to making pictures.
She graduated with a German degree from the University of Minnesota in Duluth and with a Photojournalism degree from Western Kentucky University.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Japan and Germany, Cheryl moved with her family to the United States in 1981.