Boris Spremo

Boris Spremo, press photographer born in 1935 in Susak, former Yugoslavia, and died in Canada in 2017. Boris Spremo is one of Canada's most famous photojournalists, known for his striking reports on current events in Canada and around the world.

A graduate of the Belgrade Film Institute, Spremo immigrated to Canada in 1957 and settled in Toronto. In 1962, he joined the Globe and Mail team, which he left in 1966 to work for the Toronto Star, where he remained until the 1990s. During his long career, Spremo covered dramatic events such as the FLQ crisis in Quebec City and the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, drought and famine in Africa in the 1980s, and the situation of Kurdish refugees in 1991. He is also famous for his portraits and images of Toronto.

Spremo's photographs have been published in various volumes dedicated to his work, including Boris Spremo: Twenty Years of Photojournalism (1985) and Shadows of War/Faces of Peace (1992), as well as in popular magazines such as Maclean's, Life, Time and Sports Illustrated. Spremo has received numerous national and international awards for his photojournalism. In 1966, he became the first Canadian to win first prize at the World Press Photo Competition, held in The Hague, Netherlands. In 1997, he was awarded the Order of Canada.

(Source: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca)