Marcus Yam named first internationally based staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine, Deputy Editor of Project Management and Transformation John McCutchen and Foreign and National Editor Jeffrey Fleishman made the following announcement.

We are thrilled to announce that Marcus Yam has been named the first internationally based staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times. He will be temporarily posted in Seoul, pending a move to Beijing. Yam will work with The Times’ foreign team covering stories throughout the Middle East and Asia Pacific Rim.

Yam was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A graduate of the University of Buffalo with a degree in aerospace engineering, he left a career in aerospace to become a photojournalist.

Since switching careers, Yam did post-graduate study in art in photography at Ohio University. He has been part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news teams that covered the San Bernardino terrorist attacks in 2015 for the Los Angeles Times and the deadly landslide in Oso, Wash., in 2014 for the Seattle Times.

His work has also earned an Emmy Award for news and documentary, a World Press Photo Award, a DART Award for Trauma Coverage, a Scripps Howard Visual Journalism Award, a Picture of the Year International’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award, a Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award, a National Headliner Award and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award.

Yam joined the Los Angeles Times as a METPRO trainee in 2014.