JOAO SILVA began his career with the Alberton Record, a local paper in South Africa. In 1991 Joao worked for The Star, a Johannesburg daily newspaper, as a staff photographer before joining the Associated Press in 1994. Silva became a regular freelancer for the New York Times in 1996. In 2000 Joao became a contract photographer with the New York Times. In 2000, Silva co-authored The Bang-Bang Club with Greg Marinovich, a factual account of press photographers who covered the end of the apartheid era in South Africa. In 2005 Silva published In The Company of God, a photographic book on the Iraqi Shi'a during the American occupation and fragile democracy that followed. Silva has won numerous awards.