Joao Silva’s image of spectators at the closing of Walter Reed Medical Center landed on the front page of the New York Times.

For New York Times photojournalist Joao Silva, the road to recovery has been long and arduous. But now it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel is finally getting brighter.

Silva, who lost both of his legs after stepping on a landmine while on assignment in Afghanistan last year, had one of his photographs featured on the front page of the Times yesterday, marking a triumphant return for a man whose life hung in the balance only a few months ago.

The new image — of spectators watching a parachute demonstration — ran with a story about the closing of the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C., the very hospital where Silva himself spent the last seven months in rehabilitation.

On October 23 last year, Silva was in the Kandahar Province when a bomb exploded beneath him, resulting in severe internal injuries and the loss of one leg below the knee and the other above the knee. Amazingly, Silva managed to keep shooting even after his devastating injury. The resulting photographs were recovered from the memory card in Silva’s damaged camera and featured on the Times’ photo blog.

Though he now uses two prosthetic legs and a cane, which he has to shift before taking a picture, Silva is still happy that he was able to get out and document such an important event.

“It was a matter of making the best of what I had,” he told the Times. “There will come a time when I can run, but now I can walk.” And he means that: Silva has entered to compete in this year’s New York Marathon, which he will run using a specially designed handcycle.