Erik Refner

Refner was born on the 14th January 1971 in Copenhagen and grew up in the north of the city.[1][2] As a teenager he travelled internationally, including living for three months in an Israeli kibbutz.[2]

In the 1990s, Refner was a sergeant in the Royal Danish army after which he spent one year as part of the Danish pentathlon team.[1][3] He then worked as a model for seven years, before switching to photography after one of the photographers he was working with needed an assistant.[1][4]

He won the World Press Photo of the Year in 2002, while studying at the Danish School of Media and Journalism, which he attended from 1998 to 2002.[5] His winning photograph was of the burial of a young Afghan boy in Pakistan, whose family had fled to Jalozai to escape violence in their home country.[5][6]

His early work was focussed on photography in conflict zones and took him to Afghanistan, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Palestine, and Iraq.[5] He worked at the Berlingske newspaper for eleven years, and did commercial photography for Canon, Coca Cola, Maersk and Nike.[5][1] He has been published in Elle, Esquire, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Phaidon, The New York Times, and Marie Claire.[5] He won the Cavling Prize in 2009.[5]

In 2015, he founded the IDIP.Agency to help photographers obtain payment for copyright infringements.[5]