Rémi Ochlik

Revolutions: Photographs of the Arab Spring, Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Boston, USA, 2013.

Ochlik's friends and colleagues curated his photographic work that documented the Arab Spring revolutions and posthumously published it in 2012 as Révolutions, du rêve au printemps de Rémi Ochlik.

In 2012, he photographed scenes from the Syrian civil war. He and fellow journalist Marie Colvin were killed in the Baba Amr area of Homs during heavy shelling when a rocket struck the house they were using as their media centre. Injured journalists from that same attack were William Daniels, Paul Conroy, and Edith Bouvier.

Friends championed the renaming of the City of Perpignan Young Reporter Award (Le Prix du jeune reporter de la ville de Perpignan) to the Rémi Ochlik Prize (Prix Rémi Ochlik). The first presentation of the renamed Olchik Prize was at the Visa pour l’Image festival in 2012.

Hommage à Rémi Ochlik ('Homage to Rémi Ochlik'), La Médiathèque de Florange, France, 2012

Ochlik was best known for his images of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 and 2012, photographing Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2011. In 2011, Ochlik's three pictures of the Arab Spring, "The Fall of Tripoli", "Egypt Tahrir Square" and "The Jasmine Revolution" received the Grand Prix Jean-Louis Calderon and he also won the first prize in the 2012 World Press Photo contest for his photograph of a Libyan rebel fighter. Guillaume Clavières, senior photo editor at Paris Match said of him:

His photos were purchased by Choc magazine for 2,000 euros. His photographs of the riot scenes won the François Chalais Award for Young Reporters and was projected at the Visa pour l’Image International Photojournalism Festival. He later returned to Haiti again in 2010 for IP3 to photograph the 2010–2011 Haiti cholera outbreak.

Ochlik's breakthrough came after he documented riot scenes in Haiti in 2004 during the Presidential elections. He has said about Haiti:

Jean-François Leroy, Visa pour l'Image festival, about the photos he had seen from 2004:

Rémi Ochlik began working for photography agency Wostok in September 2002 where he initially began photographing demonstrations. After leaving Wostok in 2005, Ochlik founded the Parisian photographic agency, IP3 Press, and for the first time was able to get a French press card. For IP3, Ochlik covered the French presidential campaign of 2007, photographing François Bayrou, Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy amongst others. He covered the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008.

Rémi Ochlik (16 October 1983 – 22 February 2012) was a French photojournalist who was known for his photographs of war and conflict in Haiti and the Arab Spring revolutions. Ochlik died in the February 2012 bombardment of Homs during the 2011–2012 Syrian uprising along with veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin.

Rémi Ochlik was born in 1983 in Thionville and lived in the area around Florange, Moselle, in the Lorraine region of northeastern France. As a child he had ambitions of becoming an archaeologist, but after he was given an Olympus OM1 camera by his grandfather, Ochlik gravitated toward his interest in photography. After completing school at Marcel-Pagnol in Serémange-Erzange and private high school of Saint-Pierre Chanel in Thionville, Ochlik studied photography at the Icart Photo School in Paris.

On the first anniversary of Rémi Ochlik's death, his partner Emilie Blachère, who is a journalist for Paris Match, read a poem she had written about her relationship with Rémi Ochlik on Radio 4's Broadcasting House, a popular news program. The radio host Paddy O'Connell was so moved by her poem that he could not continue to broadcast, and Radio 4 had around 12 seconds of dead air. Her poem is written as both a letter and a list about the personal qualities Blachère loved most about her partner. She includes many personal connections with Ochlik. The poem alludes to his many international assignments. Her poem includes a quotation of Ochlik's favorite movie, Singing in the Rain (1952). The published, printed poem (a variation on her reading on BBC) also references L'amour est dans le pré (the French version of Farmer Wants a Wife), Dexter (TV series), and Harry Potter. At the end of her printed poem, Blachère acknowledges another fallen journalist and a colleague and friend of Ochlik, Lucas Dolega. Dolega was the first journalist to have died in the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia. She ends her poem: "My angel, give Lucas a kiss for me. Take care of yourself. Take care of us."