AP Photographer Emilio Morenatti wins Pulitzer⁠ Prize in Feature Photography

Morenatti patiently built trust with elderly people to empathetically document the toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

Morenatti separated himself from his family for months to avoid the risk of exposure as he documented the toll of COVID-19 on the elderly.

Traveling by scooter around Barcelona, he captured images of an older couple hugging and kissing through a plastic sheet, mortuary workers in hazmat gear removing bodies and of people enduring the crisis in isolation.

Morenatti is a veteran photographer with wide experience in war zones. He was embedded with the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan in August 2009 when the vehicle he was in was hit by a roadside bomb. His left leg was amputated below the knee.

This is the second year in a row AP has won the Pulitzer for feature photography.

The news cooperative, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, has won 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography.

Here are the winning images:

A woman sits on her balcony in downtown Barcelona, Spain, May 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Leopoldo Roman, 85, lies in bed wearing a face mask as he waits for doctors during a home medical visit in Barcelona, Spain, April 3, 2020. Roman, whose leg was amputated years ago, has to pay for daily care out of his pension since the public system only provides for a social worker to come for an hour a day, three days a week. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Nurse Marta Fernandez holds up a tablet computer over the chest of 94-year-old Maria Teresa Argullos Bove so that she can speak to her sister, children and grandchildren from her hospital bed at the COVID-19 ward at the hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A patient infected with coronavirus rests in a chair inside an isolated room at the COVID-19 ward of a public hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Wearing protective suits to prevent infection, mortuary workers move the body of an elderly person who died of COVID-19 from an elevator after removing it from a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Residents look at the street through a window at the Icaria nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Francisco España, 60, looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the “Hospital del Mar” in Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 4, 2020. Francisco spent 52 days in the ICU of the hospital due to an infection of Coronavirus and he has being allowed by his doctors on this day to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of a therapy to recover from the ICU. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The body of an elderly person is prepared inside a coffin for her funeral at a morgue in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A woman pushes a cart with her belongings as she walks along an empty street in downtown Barcelona, Spain, March 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The body of an elderly person who died of COVID-19 is covered with a sheet on her bed in a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A mortuary worker collects the ashes of a COVID-19 victim from an oven after the remains where cremated at Memora mortuary in Girona, Spain, Nov. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Álvaro Puig Moreno watches television while eating a his Christmas Eve dinner at his home in Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 24, 2020. "The solitude gets to me these days, I often feel depressed," Puig said. "These holidays, instead of making me happy, make me sad. I hate them. Most of family has died, I am one of the last ones left. I will spend Christmas at home alone because I don't have anyone to spend them with." (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Mortuary workers take off their protective clothing at the entrance of a building decorated with a Christmas tree, after removing the body of person who is suspected of dying from COVID-19 in Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Agustina Cañamero, 81, hugs and kisses her husband Pascual Pérez, 84, through a plastic film screen to avoid contracting the coronavirus at a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, June 22, 2020. Even when it comes wrapped in plastic, a hug can convey tenderness and relief, love and devotion. The fear that gripped Cañamero during the 102 days she and her 84-year-old husband spent physically separated during Spain's coronavirus outbreak dissolved the moment the couple embraced through a screen of plastic film. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

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