RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed pho­to­jour­nal­ist and for­mer Guardian Me­dia pho­to ed­i­tor An­drea De Sil­va, whose pho­tographs have tak­en the sto­ries of Trinidad and To­ba­go to au­di­ences around the world, re­ceived the na­tion’s 2026 Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver award on Re­pub­lic Day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, a day be­fore the award cer­e­mo­ny, De Sil­va said re­ceiv­ing the award was an ho­n­our which came as a com­plete sur­prise.

She added that the award was even more spe­cial as her el­dest daugh­ter, Le­An­dra, had been se­lect­ed to per­form at the Na­tion­al Awards cer­e­mo­ny.

“It was un­ex­pect­ed. I feel hum­bled and priv­i­leged,” De Sil­va said.

She not­ed that af­ter four decades be­hind the cam­era, she has pho­tographed some of the most sig­nif­i­cant mo­ments, peo­ple and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Caribbean.

Yet, de­spite the ac­co­lades, in­ter­na­tion­al as­sign­ments and pho­tographs that have earned glob­al recog­ni­tion, De Sil­va at­trib­ut­es her jour­ney to one source—Je­ho­vah God.

De Sil­va said the op­por­tu­ni­ties she re­ceived through­out her ca­reer were “amaz­ing,” and she re­mains grate­ful for the doors that were opened for her.

She said her ca­reer be­gan when she was a teenag­er, and she steadi­ly worked her way through the ranks of the me­dia in­dus­try.

She joined the Trinidad Guardian in 1983 and re­mained there un­til 1995 be­fore mov­ing to the Trinidad Ex­press.

She re­turned to the Guardian in 2001, even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing chief pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the Wire, as­so­ciate pho­to ed­i­tor and act­ing pho­to ed­i­tor at the Guardian.

De Sil­va said she pub­lished her first im­ages al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter join­ing the Guardian.

In 2006, she found­ed Sil­va Im­age, her own pro­fes­sion­al me­dia agency, pro­vid­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, mar­ket­ing, ad­ver­tis­ing and cor­po­rate video pro­duc­tion ser­vices.

De Sil­va said leav­ing the Guardian did not mean leav­ing jour­nal­ism.

She said since 2007 she has worked with the Span­ish News Agency EFE and since 2008 she has worked with Thom­son Reuters.

Her pho­tographs have been dis­trib­uted and pub­lished by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia in­clud­ing CNN, BBC, ABC, NBC, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, The Wall Street Jour­nal, Time Mag­a­zine, Fi­nan­cial Times, Sports Il­lus­trat­ed and The Guardian in Britain.

De Sil­va’s work has re­peat­ed­ly re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.

In 2010, Reuters ranked her num­ber one in its “Car­ni­val Around the World” fea­ture, and she was named Reuters Ed­i­tor’s Choice as num­ber one among its Top 24 Im­ages Around the World that April.

In 2014, the Fi­nan­cial Times of Lon­don, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pulitzer Cen­tre, com­mis­sioned her for a ma­jor Caribbean-fo­cused fea­ture. That same year, she se­cured the top eight po­si­tions in The Wash­ing­ton Post’s “Car­ni­val Around the World” fea­ture.

In 2015, her pho­to­graph of a blood moon was se­lect­ed by Time Mag­a­zine as one of the best im­ages of the rare ce­les­tial event.

Then, in 2017, De Sil­va be­came the on­ly Caribbean pho­to­jour­nal­ist to ex­hib­it at “100 Won­ders of the World” in St Pe­ters­burg, Rus­sia, along­side pho­tog­ra­phers from Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic, GEO and Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.

De Sil­va’s work has al­so tak­en her be­yond break­ing news and ma­jor events in­to the lives of or­di­nary peo­ple.

In 2018, she launched “A Day in the Life Of”, a long-form doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy project cap­tur­ing the lives, rou­tines and con­tri­bu­tions of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, she used her pho­tog­ra­phy to launch the “Mask Up Cam­paign”, fea­tur­ing pub­lic fig­ures and or­di­nary peo­ple in an ef­fort to en­cour­age mask-wear­ing and pub­lic-health com­pli­ance.

As she ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the award, De Sil­va urged jour­nal­ists to con­tin­ue to up­hold their in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for up­hold­ing pub­lic in­ter­est.

De Sil­va said as she con­tin­ues her work as a jour­nal­ist, her com­mit­ment to Je­ho­vah God con­tin­ues to shape how she spends her time, in­clud­ing shar­ing guid­ance from the Bible with those who seek her coun­sel.

“I want to thank Je­ho­vah for help­ing me to see things dif­fer­ent­ly as I cap­ture my pho­tographs and for giv­ing me the abil­i­ty to help oth­ers through my pro­fes­sion,” she said.

She added that it was an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege to re­ceive a na­tion­al award, adding that af­ter four decades of cap­tur­ing the defin­ing mo­ments of oth­er peo­ple’s lives, Re­pub­lic Day will give her a mo­ment of her own to trea­sure.