Justice and Cleansing in Iran ~ 1980 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Jahangir Razmi of Ettela'at, Iran
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's Islamic Revolution steamrolls over Iran, imposing his Shiite Muslim beliefs on the entire country and destroying "corrupt Western influences." The country's 4 million Sunni Muslim Kurds reject Khomeni's rule-and his religion-and demand independence. Khomeni sends in his Revolutionary Guards, who slaughter thousands of Kurds, dispensing "justice" in mock trials.
On Aug. 27, in Sanandaj. Nine Kurdiah rebels and two former police officers of the disposed Shah of Iran are tried and sentenced to death. Their execution by firing squad is brutal and quick, documented in startling detail by a photographer from Ettdn'at an Iranian newspaper. To protect the photographer's life, his photo ran without credit in Ettela'at. A UPI staffer in Iran acquired the picture from the newspaper, and it was transmitted worldwide.
Explained the UPI staffer: "The photographer later related he was at risk of being shot himself, and smuggled the film in his trouser pocket. Those in the bureau often sat gazing at the picture, and contemplated the numbing transition from life to death that it depicts."
The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to "an unnamed photographer," which is how it stayed until 2006 when The Wall Siren Journal conclusively identified the photographer as Jahangir Razmi, who now runs a photo studio in Tehran. "Theres no more reason to hide." Razmi told the Journal
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Sudane Famine ~ 1994 Pulitzer Prize, Feature Photography, Kevin Carter, The New York Times
By February 1993, South African photojournalist Kevin Carter has spent a decade photographing the political strife roiling his homeland. He describes lying in the middle of a gunfight. "wondering about which millisecond next I was going to die, about putting something on film they could use as my last picture."
Needing a change, Carter travels to the Sudan to cover the relentless East African famine. At a feeding station at Ayod. He finds people so weakened by hunger that they are dying at the rate of 20 an hour. As he photographs their hollow eyes and bloated bellies, Carter hears a soft whimpering in the bush. Investigating, he finds a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. Carter crouches, readying his camera. Suddenly, a vulture lands nearby. Carter waits. The vulture waits. Carter takes his photographs, then chases the bird away. Afterward, he sits under a tree and cries.
The photograph runs in newspapers worldwide. Carter receives outraged letters and angry midnight phone calls. Everyone wants to know: Why didn't he pick up the child?
Journalists in the Sudan had been told not to touch famine victims, because of the risk of transmitting disease. This is no comfort to Carter, who tells a friend. "I'm really, really sorry I didn’t pick the child up." The controversy and other personal problems overwhelm him. On July 26, 1994, police find Kevin Carter dead, an apparent suicide. He is 33 years old.
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Human Torch ~ 1991 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Greg Marinovich, Associated Press
Soweto. South Africa: Its not yet dawn when Greg Marinovich and Associated Press reporter Tom Cohen stumble onto a gunfight between supporters of the African National Congress and the predominantly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party. A train pulls into a nearby station; a Zulu man, Lindsaye Tshabalala, disembarks. "He could have been returning from a night shift or making an early start to visit friends," says Marinovich.
ANC youths seize Tshabalaia. "They began to stone and stab him. I watched in shock as he fell to the ground." The assault intensifies; finally, "a man hauled out a massive, shiny Howie knife and stabbed hard into the victim's chest. My heart was racing and I had difficulty taking deep enough breaths. I called out 'Who is he?’ ‘What’s he done?’ A voice from the crowd replied. "He's an Inkatha spy."
When Marinovich tries to argue, the attackers insist he stop taking pictures. Marinovich says, "I'll stop raking pictures when you stop killing him." The brutal attack continues. "For those crucial minutes, it was as if I lost my grasp of what was going on. The pictures I kept mechanically snapping off would later substitute for the events my memory could not recall."
The Zulu now lies motionless on the ground. Marinovich is momentarily drawn away by an attack on another man. "Suddenly, I heard a hollow 'whoof’ and women began to ululate in a celebration of victory. Dread filled me. The man I thought dead was running across the field below us. His body enveloped in flames. A bare-chested, barefoot man ran into view and swung a machete into the mans blazing skull as a frantic young boy fled from this vision of hell."
Marinovich makes it back to his car. "I pulled over and. closing my eyes, began to beat the steering wheel with my fists. I could finally scream."
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The Soiling of Old Glory ~ 1977 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Stanley Foreman, Boston Herald American.
April 6, 1976. At Bostons City Hall, 200 white students demonstrate against plans to bus children to integrate the city's schools.
When Boston Herald American photographer Stanley Forman arrives to cover the rally, he finds that "everything appeared to be over. There had been a Pledge of Allegiance. Suddenly. I saw a group of youngsters. They were mixed racially. There was some pushing and shoving."
Forman spots Theodore Landsmark, executive director of the Contractor's Association of Boston, heading toward City Hall. Landsmark is black; the students are white. Suddenly, "everything started to happen in front of me." The white students attack Landsmark, punching and kicking him.
Through his viewfinder, Forman sees a student running with a flagpole dangling a large American flag. As others in the crowd hold Landsmark, the student strikes him repeatedly with the pole. "I was making pictures of Landsmark being hit, and I saw him going down and rolling over. He was being hit with the flagpole. I switched lenses to get him escaping from the crowd.
Police officers intervene, but not before Forman has recorded the moment that an American flag, symbol of liberty, is used as a weapon of racial hatred.
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Assassination of Asanuma ~ 1961 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, Yasushi Nagao, United Press International
It's election season in Japan — time for discussion, argument and debate. On Oct. 12, I960, 3,000 people cram Tokyo's Hibiya Hall to hear Socialist Partv Chairman Inejiro Asanuma battle it out with Liberal-Democratic Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda. Reporters, TV crews and photographers crowd the stage; one of them is Yasushi Nagao, photographer for the Mamichi Shimbun.
Chairman Asanuma lambastes the Japanese government for its mutual defense treaty with the United States. Right-wing students begin to heckle and shout, throwing wads of paper at the burly party chairman. The police rush to quell the unrest. The press follows, except for Nagao, who, with only one shot left in his camera, stays close to the stage.
Suddenly, right-wing student Otoya Yamaguchi rushes out. "1 thought Yamaguchi was carrying a brown stick to strike Asanuma," Nagao remembers. With a jolt, Nagao realizes the slender figure is wielding a Japanese samurai sword. Before anyone can stop him, Yamaguchi plunges the sword into the chairman. Asanuma staggers. Yamaguchi pulls out the blade. Nagao lifts his camera. As the photographer uses his last frame, Yamaguchi spears Asanuma again — through the heart.
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The Terror of War ~ 1973 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Huynh Cong "Nick" Út, Associated Press
It rails from the sky, a thick, caustic gel, sticking to anything it touches — thatched roofs, bare skin — then burning, burning. Napalm: Everyone who is in Vietnam during the war sees it. For
Nick Ut, a young Vietnamese photographer working for The Associated Press, the experience is life-altering.
Ut has lost his older brother to the war. He himself has been wounded three times. On June 8, 1972, he sets out to cover a battle raging near Trang Bang, 25 miles west of Saigon. "Really heavy fighting." he says. "I shot Vietnamese bombing all morning, the rockets and mortar." Determined to eliminate an entrenched Viet Cong unit. South Vietnamese planes dive low, dropping napalm. But one plane misses. Fire rains down on South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Women and children rim screaming. A mother carries a badly burned child. "The one mother with the baby, she died right in my camera. I hear four or five children screaming, Please help! Please help!"
As Ut furiously snaps photographs, a young girl runs toward him — arms outstretched, eyes clenched in pain, clothes burned off by napalm. "She said. 'Too hot, please help me.' I say yes,’ and take her to the hospital."
The girl. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, survives. She grows up, gets married. Through the years, she and Ut stay in touch, brought together by a moment of tragedy.
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Boston Fire ~ 1976 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Stanley J. Forman, Boston Herald American
It's quitting time on a brutally hot day in July when Boston Herald American photographer Stanley Forman hears a report of a fire in Boston’s Back Bay. He follows screaming fire trucks to a six-story apartment house in flames.
Forman remembers "a roaring, roaring inferno... heavy smoke. Heavy fire. It was like a firestorm."
Forman runs to the back of the building. "Then I spotted them. A woman, a child and they re standing there on the fire escape, 10 feet from the fire itself. And they're looking for help." As Forman watches, a firefighter climbs down from the roof. He pulls them away from the flames, shielding them with his heavy rubber coat. Seeking a better vantage point, Forman climbs onto a ladder truck.
"Everything was fine," says Forman. "I was just shooting a routine rescue. Switching lenses, switching cameras." A ladder rises slowly toward the fire escape. The firefighter reaches out to grab the ladder....
"All of a sudden, boom! It just crashes." As Forman watches, the fire escape rips away from the building. The woman is falling, the child is falling, metal is flying...
"Everything is falling and I'm thinking. Just keep shooting.' And I'm shooting and shooting. Then a bell went off in my head. I didn’t want to see them hit." Forman turns away. When he turns back, he discovers the 19-year-old woman is dead. Her 3-year-old niece miraculous survives.
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Saigon Execution ~ 1969 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Edward Adams, Associated Press
Jan. 30. 1968. North Vietnamese communists launch their massive Tet offensive, bringing the fighting right into the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. Thirty-six hours later. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, working with an NBC News crew, comes upon two South Vietnamese soldiers escorting a prisoner through the streets of Saigon.
They walked him down to the street corner. We were taking pictures. He turned out to be a Viet Cong lieutenant. And out of nowhere came this guy who we didn't know. I was about five feet away and he pulled out his pistol."
The man with the pistol is Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of South Vietnam's national police. It all
happens very fast: The general raises his pistol. Adams raises his camera. Loan presses his pistol against the prisoner's temple. He fires. Adams releases the shutter.
Loan "'shot him in the head and walked away." Adams remembers. "And walked by us and said, "They killed many of my men and many of our people."' For Loan, the shooting is an act of justice: The Viet Cong lieutenant had just murdered a South Vietnamese colonel, his wife and their six children.
The American anti-war movement adopts the photograph as a symbol of the excesses of the war. But Adams feels his picture is misunderstood. "If you re this man. this general, and you just caught this guy after he killed some of your people.... How do you know you wouldn't have pulled that trigger yourself? You have to put yourself in that situation----It's a war."
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Dead U.S. Soldier in Mogadishu ~ 1994 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Paul Watson, Toronto Star
In the early 1990s, clan warfare ravages Somalia. Famine spreads. A United States-led multinational force restores supply lines, but its presence creates new
tensions. In July 1993, four journalists are beaten to death by an angry mob. Most Western journalists flee. Paul Watson of The Toronto Star stays behind. The press corps is down to just a few journalists, says Watson, when Somali gunmen shoot down an American helicopter in late September. "Witnesses said people dragged part of an American corpse away in a sack to put it on display," says the photographer. "The Pentagon flatly denied that American body parts were being paraded through the streets of Mogadishu."
On Oct. 3, a U.S. Army unit engages in a fierce fight with Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. In the aftermath, Watson hears that an American serviceman has been captured. Out on the street, he discovers a mob dragging the body of a U.S. soldier. "I approached with a bodyguard on either side. The mob parted long enough for me to shoot about seven frames. My bodyguard forced me back into the car because he had heard threats from the crowd."
Watson’s first photographs show the filthy body of the dead soldier, clad only in underwear, partially exposing his genitalia. "1 jumped out to get just a few frames more. They were all half-body pictures. I didn't want to give any editor an excuse not to use the picture."
Hundreds of newspapers publish the photograph. The public reacts with horror. In March 1994, the United States withdraws entire military force from Somalia.
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Tragedy by the Sea ~ 1955 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, John L. Gaunt, Los Angeles Times
April 2, J 954. Los Angeles Times photographer John Gaunt lounges in his front yard in Hermosa Beach, Calif., enjoying the sun. Suddenly, a neighbor calls out. "There was some excitement on the beach," says Gaunt. "I grabbed a RoIIeiflex camera and ran."
Down by the water, Gaunt finds a distraught young couple by the shoreline. Moments before, their 19-month-old son was playing happily in their yard. Somehow, he wandered down to the
beach. He was swept away by the fierce tide.
The little boy is gone. There is nothing anyone can do. Gaunt, who has a daughter about the same age, takes four quick photographs of the grieving couple. "As I made the last exposure,
they turned and walked away" he says. The little boys body is later recovered from the surf.
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Crisis in Haiti ~ 1995 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Carol Guzy, Washington Post
"Some say I became obsessed, but I’d rather call it a mission." Carol Guzy has covered Haiti since the early 1980s, returning on her own when she cannot convince an editor to send her. "I felt like I had to make people see what was going on there." says Guzy. "The country is so small no one in the U.S. is aware of it."
On Dec. 16, 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide wins Haiti's first free presidential elections. Less than a year later, he is deposed and sent into exile. The United States imposes a trade embargo; thousands of Haitians flee. "I had gotten to the point that even I had lost all hope," says Guzy. "I thought nothing would get better. The military government was entrenched." In September 1994, U.S. troops land in Haiti to help return Aristide to power. "There were still a lot of problems," says Guzy. "But for the first time in a long time I saw hope and even jubilation in people's eyes."
In Port-au-Prince, Guzy photographs a "very- joyous democracy march." Then someone throws a grenade into the crowd. "People were killed and wounded. There was shooting, nobody could figure out where it was coming from. I hit the ground with everybody else. I turned and saw the (U.S.) soldier. The guy- on the ground with his arm raised up, the crowd thought he had thrown the grenade and they were trying to tear him apart. The U.S. troops were trying to protect him."
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Brutality in Bangkok ~ 1977 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, Neal Ulevich, Associated Press
October 1976: Thailand's third government in two years teeters on the brink, rocked by clashes between right-wing vocational students and left-wing university students. Late one night, two liberal students are lynched.
Associated Press photographer Neal Ulevich covered the Vietnam War for five years. But nothing he saw in the jungle prepared him for the morning of Oct. 6, when right-wing students attack left-wing students near the university. "When I got there, it was getting more and more violent. Paramilitary troops heavily armed with recoilless rifles showed up. The left-wing students were not armed and were not shooting back. They took refuge in the university buildings.
"Tremendous volleys of automatic weapons were fired across the soccer fields into the classrooms. There were bodies all over, glass breaking. There was no place to take cover. I was very scared."
Finally, the left-wing students surrender. Ulevich heads for the gates, anxious to get his pictures back to his office. "I saw some commotion in the trees. I walked down there and I saw a body hanging. He was certainly dead, but the crowd was so enraged that a man was hitting the body on the head with a folding chair. I stood there to see if anybody was looking at me. Nobody was. I took a few frames and walked away."
In the end, an irony: "When I won the Pulitzer, the Bangkok papers noted it on Page One. They were very proud that a photographer from Bangkok had won the Pulitzer. They didn't show the pictures."
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Ethiopean Famine ~ 1985 Pulitzer Prize, Feature Photography, Stan Grossfeld, The Boston Globe
"We snuck in on a food convoy. The convoy would travel at night and during the day they'd cover it up because Ethiopian MiGs would blow it up if they saw it."
It is 1984 when Stan Grossfeld and Boston Globe reporter Colin Nickerson discover the harsh reality of famine and politics in Ethiopia. The country's drought is in its fourth year. The crop has failed. The livestock are dead. Hundreds of thousands of people abandon their farms and villages and set out, looking for food.
There is little to be found. Some 130,000 tons of food from the United States have been held up by the Ethiopian government, which is determined to starve the rebel-held countryside into submission. Starve the people do — half a million Ethiopians, many of them children so hungry their bodies literally consume themselves. I’ll never forget the sounds of kids dying of starvation. They sound like cats wailing." For Grossfeld, the experience is overwhelming: "You try to be a technician and look through the viewfinder; sometimes the viewfinder fills up with tears.”
At a feeding station in the Tigray Province, Grossfeld photographs a child licking a flour sack. "I remember that kid," says Grossfeld. "He might have survived. He was smart enough to lick the sack." But for others, there is no hope. Grossfeld photographs this starving mother and child waiting in line for food in Wad Sharafin Camp. Hours later, the child is dead.
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Kent State University Massacre ~ 1971 Pulitzer Prize, Spot News Photography, John Paul Filo, Valley Daily News and Daily Dispatch.
Spring 1970, Student activists tear up campuses across America. Things are quiet at Ohio's Kent State University — until police break up a rowdy beer bash. Twenty-four hours later, 800 students demonstrate on the university commons. Someone throws a lighted railroad flare into the ROTC building. Firefighters arrive. Students hurl rocks and cut hoses. The building burns to the ground.
When photojournalism student John Filo shows up for classes on Monday morning, there are 500 National Guard troops on campus. Disappointed that he missed the weekend action, Filo grabs his camera and heads for a student demonstration scheduled on the commons.
The campus bell rings. The rally begins. Soon. National Guardsmen appear and order the demonstrators to disperse. Students shout "Pigs off campus!"' They throw rocks. The Guardsmen form two lines and tire tear gas canisters into the crowd. The students throw more rocks. The Guardsmen retreat up a hill. At the top. the troopers suddenly kneel, aim and fire.
Filo thinks they are shooting blanks. Then he sees a bullet hit a metal sculpture and smack into a tree. Around him. students fall to the pound. A boy lies in a puddle of blood. "A girl came up and knelt over the body and let out a God-awful scream. That made me click the camera."
Thirteen students are injured. Four die. Eight troopers are eventually indicted in the killings. No one is ever convicted.
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Anti-Guerrilla Operations in Rhodesia ~ 1978 Pulitzer Prize, Feature Photography, J. Ross Baughman, Associated Press
Ross Baughman wears a military uniform and carries a rifle. He rides the Rhodesian back country on horseback. But he is not a soldier. He is a photographer for The Associated Press.
It is 1977. The white Rhodesian government is under intense pressure from the country's disenfranchised black majority. Baughman travels with a rugged cavalry unit. Grey's Scouts. Their mission: to seek out anti-government guerrillas and destroy them.
The villagers will not give up the guerrillas. So the scouts resort to torture. "They force them to line up in push-up stance," Baughman remembers. "They're holding that position for 45 minutes in the sun. many of them starting to shake violently."
The soldiers warn that the first man who falls will be taken away. "Eventually, the first guy fell. They took him around the back of the building, knocked him out and fired a shot into the air. They continued bringing men to the back of the building. The poor guy on the end started crying and going crazy and he finally broke and started talking. As it turns out. what he was saying wasn't true, but the scouts were willing to use it as a lead."
Remembers Baughman: "It had all the feeling of an eventual massacre. I was afraid that I might see entire villages murdered."
The military confiscates most of Baughman's film. But he smuggles out three rolls. The pictures are published. The photographer is forced to leave Africa. Three years later, free elections are held in Rhodesia. Robert Mugabe becomes the first prime minister of the new, black majority-led country. Zimbabwe.
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Shooting of James Meredith ~ 1967 Pulitzer Prize, Photography, Jack R. Thornell, Associated Press
It has been four years since James Meredith became the first African-American to attend the University ot Mississippi— with the intervention of the U.S. attorney general U.S. marshals and the National Guard. Determined to prove that black Americans can pursue their civil rights without fear. Meredith decides to walk the length of Mississippi to encourage African-American's to vote.
It is the second day of the walk—June 6, 1966, two years alter three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. The state is deeply divided by racial hatred. Meredith is unarmed, accompanied by a handful of supporters, a few police officers and some journalists. One of them is Jack Thornell of The Associated Press. "The press wasn't really walking with him." says Thornell. "We were leapfrogging ahead in cars."
Thornell and two other photographers are parked by the side of the road as Meredith approaches. Suddenly, a voice calls out: "James. I just want James Meredith." A white man stands, leveling a 16-gauge shotgun.
Says Thornell, "I was sitting in the car when we heard the shot. By the time we got out. Meredith was going down. We were in the line of fire. We were trying to protect our heads. We weren't taking a lot of photographs." But as Meredith crawls painfully to the side of the road. Thornell manages to capture his outraged agony on film.
Galvanized by the shooting, black leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael take up the cause. Meredith recovers and rejoins the march, which is now 18,000 strong. The term "black power" is born.
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 06-18-2012).]
