Photographer of the Year, Asia

Roman Pilipey is a Ukrainian photojournalist working for the European Pressphoto Agency (epa). His photography career started from freelancing for different Ukrainian news agencies and newspapers while at the same time studying journalism at one of Kyiv's universities. The first main event he witnessed as the photographer was the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv, 2013-2014, which he covered from the beginning until the end mainly for epa as the freelance photographer. From 2014 he was covering the war in eastern Ukraine, and the same year became the epa staff photographer. For the next few years, Roman's focus was mainly on the eastern Ukraine conflict and its aftermath, while also working in other parts of Ukraine. In 2017 Roman relocated to Beijing from where he works on stories and covers major news events in China as the epa photographer. In 2022 he became the epa bureau chief for the China region. Throughout his years in China, he has been traveling to almost every corner of the country. Some of the main coverage stories include the situations in Xinjiang and Tibet, as well in 2019 he has been covering the protest movement in Hong Kong, and in 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, the ground zero of the coronavirus.