[1][2] After graduating from a TAFE photography course in 2004, Quilty undertook an informal internship at Fairfax Media which led to full-time employment.
[3] Quilty left Fairfax in 2010 and became a freelance photographer in Sydney, before he relocated to New York.
[3] In 2013, Quilty visited Afghanistan where he says he discovered his "bonafide purpose and fulfilment" in his work, deciding to be permanently based in Kabul.
[6] The award was presented to Quilty in recognition for "The Man on the Operating Table", a photograph of hospital patient Baynazar Mohammed Nazar lying dead on an operating table in the Kunduz Trauma Centre, run by Médecins Sans Frontières, after the 2015 American airstrike which killed 42 people and injured over 30 others.
[7] His first book, August in Kabul: America's last days in Afghanistan, was published in 2022.