‘Home-grown’ Pulitzer Prize Photographs
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| Michel duCille won the 1988 Feature Photography Pulitzer for a photo essay on crack cocaine addicts in a Miami housing project |
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| Associated Press photographer Alan Diaz won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for his photograph of the United States Border Patrol's BORTAC team's seizure of Elian Gonzalez |
Free Event
Join us in the Leica Lounge on Thursday, January 8, 2015 with Eric Newton. Eric will be talking about 'Home Grown' Pulitzer Prize photographs and the photographers who created them.
‘Home-grown’ Pulitzer Prize Photographs
A passport is not a Pulitzer. In other words, being in a war zone on the other side of the world is not a guarantee you’ll get great photographs. Prize-winning photos are all around us, often coming suddenly and captured only by those who are ready for them.
On the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, author and journalist Eric Newton tells the story behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos taken of the “World Series quake” by the staff of the Oakland Tribune. How do they hold up? Are they history? Art? Both? How do local news Pulitzers compare with the ones from faraway events?
Newton, co-author of Capture The Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs, will lead a visual tour of the “home-grown” Pulitzer photographs. Some are born in the immediacy of a shocking news event, from the rubble of Florida hurricanes to firefighters at the World Trade Center; others are dramatic eyewitness accounts, such as the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. Still other photographers linger, documenting what happens after the news, and some are the completely unexpected result of a drive in the country.
Many of the issues faced by “home-grown” Pulitzer-winners are identical to those faced by their globe-trotting colleagues: how much risk should they take? … how do they shoot in a hurry? … can they win the trust of subjects? … did they know what they had when they got it? But other issues are uniquely local, such as the welfare of the photographer’s own families.
Leica Lounge is a lecture series hosted by Leica Store Miami which features presentations by local members of the photography community. Held monthly, these free events are designed to create and inspire the local photography community through sharing images and exchanging ideas.
The Leica Lounge is kindly sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery. Participants will be able to sample some of their amazing craft beers during the event. Brooklyn Brewery is one of the largest craft breweries in the United States, producing a portfolio of traditional and experimental beers sure to impress any beer drinker.
Eric Newton is senior advisor to the president at a leading national funder of journalism programs, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of Miami. As a program director and vice president during his first decade at Knight, he helped build the journalism and media innovation program from a department of one into a team of seven, overseeing the development of more than $300 million in grants.Previously, Newton was founding managing editor of the Newseum, leading the content team at the world’s first museum of news. He started at California newspapers. As city editor, assistant managing editor and managing editor of the Oakland Tribune under Bob and Nancy Maynard, he helped the paper win more than 150 awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.
His most popular books are “Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field Notes From the Digital Age of Journalism,” “Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists: The Newseum’s Most Intriguing Newspeople” and “Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs.” A distinguished alumnus of San Francisco State University (BA in journalism), he was a Rotary International Scholar at the University of Birmingham, England (MA in international studies). He has taught journalism at all levels and is the co-founder of the First Amendment Project, a nonprofit that provides legal services on free speech and free press issues.
Newton shared a Peabody Award for Link TV’s “Mosaic: World News From the Middle East.” He won the Reddick Award at the University of Texas for service to the field of communications, the Radio Television Digital News Foundation First Amendment Award for Knight Foundation’s work to create Sunshine Week and the Markoff Award from the University of California Berkeley for Knight’s support of investigative reporting.