For its second edition, the Prix Lucas Dolega was awarded on Friday, January 18, at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris, to the Italian photographer Alessio Romenzi for his work in Syria.

“In 2012, I spent about six months in Syria over more than a half-dozen trips,” Romenzi told me at La Porte Montmartre, a Paris café where he came with his friend Stanley Green, whom he met at the Tbilisi Photo Festival.

Romenzi is a young photographer, even if he’ll turn 39 this April. He only began photojournalism in 2009 following, “another life, married in a small village in central Italy,” he said with a gentle smile on his Christlike face. “I had a lot of other jobs before coming to photography.”

He started out covering Tahrir Square in Egypt, then the war in Lebanon, “without much success in terms of publishing.”

It was with the civil war in Syria that he got his first assignments from Time and Paris Match. He remains freelance but relies on Corbis to distribute his work. At Perpignan in September 2012, he was a favorite for the Visa d’Or. In October he came in a close second for the Prix Bayeux-Calvados for War Correspondents.

Responding to the question about what the Prix Lucas Dolega represents for him—the prize is named after the photographer murdered in Tunis in 2011 on the eve of the Arab Spring—Romenzi was moved: “I’m touched because he was a young photographer like myself. We’re from the same family: people who want to show the world how things are.” In Syria, things are not going well. “It’s very dangerous,” says Romenzi. “You’re in a village, you don’t know if the next one belongs to the rebel forces or to Assad. In Aleppo, it’s worse, you can’t tell what’s happening from one street to the next.”

Following the Spanish photographer Emilio Morenatti in 2012, Romenzi confirms the internationalization of the Prix Lucas Dolega. A hundred photojournalists from across the world submitted their work this year, and the quality of the entries was perhaps higher than ever.

The family and friends of Lucas Dolega were delighted to hear Mayor Bertrand Delanoë express his commitment to the prize, along with its sponsors: Nikon France, la SAIF, UPP, and Polka Magazine.

Michel Puech