James Hill was born in 1967 in London, England. After attending Oxford and the London College of Printing, he took up photography and in 1991 set off for the Soviet Union where he worked for over ten years, first in Kiev, then from 1995 on based in Moscow as a contract photographer for The New York Times. His body of work from the conflict in Afghanistan, where he spent three months in 2001, earned him the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003 he reported on the war in Iraq for The New York Times and Time. A web journal of his weeks with US troops, “In the Heart of the Fight,” was awarded the NPPA award for best news picture story on the web. In 2005 his images from the Beslan tragedy won First Prize in General News Stories at World Press Photo and the award for Feature Photography from the Overseas Press Club of America. He continues to work on contract for The New York Times and with many major US and European news magazines. He is based in Moscow.