Quick Facts
Biography
Jesús Abad Colorado is a Colombian photojournalist. His work focuses on human rights and armed conflict.
He was born in 1967 in Medellín, Colombia. He received a BA in Communications from the University of Antioquia. He worked as a photographer for the Medellín newspaper El Colombiano from 1992 to 2001. His work has been shown in more than 30 exhibits, and has been shown internationally. He is co-author of two books, Relatos e Imágenes: El desplazamiento Forzado en Colombia (Narratives and Images: Forced Internal Displacement in Colombia) and Desde la prisión, realidades de las cárceles en Colombia (From the Prison, Realities of the jails in Colombia), and has collaborated on many other books on the subject of human rights.
In 2000, he was kidnapped at a roadblock by National Liberation Army guerrillas and held for two days.
His work has been recognized with numerous awards. He won the Simón Bolivar Prize for Journalism three times. In 2006, he was awarded the Caritas award in Switzerland and the CPJ International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists had never before given this award to a photojournalist. In 2009, he was on the shortlist for the Prix Pictet.