By Donald R. Winslow
NEW YORK, NY (April 7, 2008) - The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes for photography were awarded today to Adrees Latif of Reuters for Breaking News Photography, and to NPPA member Preston Gannaway for Feature Photography for "Remember Me," the story of cancer patient Carolynne St. Pierre as she endured exhausting cancer treatments for one simple reason: so that her children would get to know her better and remember her when she's gone.
And photojournalist Michel du Cille of The Washington Post was a member of the three-person team who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing the mistreatment of wounded veterans at the U.S. Army's Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.
NPPA member du Cille, who also won photography Pulitzers in 1986 and 1988, was recognized by Pulitzer board this year along with reporters Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull for their "distinguished and meritorious public service by a newspaper."
Latif won the Pulitzer Prize for his "dramatic photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar," judges said.
Latif's picture shows videographer Kenji Nagai still holding his camera up as protesters flee oncoming military troops and police. Video shows that Nagai, who was filming near a group of demonstrators in Yangon, Burma, was pushed to the ground and shot at nearly point-blank range. The bullet pierced his heart, the Japanese embassy in Burma said after the shooting. Nagai, 50, was working for APF News based in Tokyo. At the time, Latif's photograph was moved without a credit to the photographer, just as an unidentified stringer, to protect his welfare.
"Adrees is just amazing. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will come up with the picture," Thomas Szlukovenyi, the global picture editor for Reuters, said today from London when he heard the news. "He has an eye that few photographers have. There is not one job I can come up with where he will not create some incredible picture."
Although he was hard to contact, Szlukovenyi was able to reach Latif in distant Nepal to tell the photojournalist about his Pulitzer win.
"These images gave the world insight into Myanmar’s desire for change," Latif told Szlukovenyi. "For me, as a journalist, the highest honor is that the world will remember this story long after it has disappeared from the headlines.”
Latif is a Reuters senior staff photographer based in Bangkok, Thailand. He was a freelancer for Reuters in Houston, TX, who performed well and was given a staff position in Los Angeles. From there, he was assigned to Thailand.
"Latif's a great photographer," photo editor Gary Cameron said from the Reuters picture desk in Washington today. "He went into that country with one camera body and two fixed-length lenses and did an amazing job." Cameron said the Washington desk talked with Latif earlier today. "He's going para-sailing in about four hours, without much sleep, to shoot a picture."
Gannaway shot "Remember Me" while on staff at The Concord Monitor. A few weeks ago she left the Monitor for a new staff position at The Rocky Mountain News in Denver.
"Remember Me" won first place in Best Picture Story (Smaller Markets) in NPPA's 2007 Best Of Photojournalism competition. It's online here as a multimedia presentation.
The essay tells the tender story of Carolynne St. Pierre as she undergoes a long series of painful chemotherapy sessions to put off the inevitable for as long as possible so that her young children will get to know her better, and have more memories of their mother, for that time when she is gone.
Gannaway flew back from Denver to be with her former coworkers at The Monitor today to await the Pulitzer news, former Monitor picture editor Dan Habib told News Photographer today. He also came back to the paper to celebrate today, after working there as the Monitor's picture editor and with Gannaway for many years, including overseeing "Remember Me." After 12 years there, Habib left The Montitor in March to become a filmmaker in residence at the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire.
"I've been in a constant state of shock" since she heard she'd won a Pulitzer, Gannaway told News Photographer magazine today from the Monitor's newsroom.
"Richard [St. Pierre] just left." He's Carolynne's husband and was the focus of "Remember Me" after she died. "He came over to the Monitor with me for the celebration today. It's hard to know what he's feeling, but he's really grateful that Carolynne's story is going to reach that many more people because of this. She really wanted to be remembered. Their biggest motivation in letting us do the story was to have the documentary for their kids. That was a great symbiotic relationship, I think. Sometimes photojournalism is so much about 'taking,' but they knew that when it was over they'd have this body of work, and we were all able to feel good about that."
After working so long, and hard, on the story, it's bittersweet that both Gannaway and Habib are now gone from The Monitor. "I told the Monitor's newsroom today that this award is the culmination of everything I've learned here, from everyone, over the last five years that I've been here, and that I'm so proud of the newspaper, and so proud that I could have the opportunity to bring a Pulitzer to The Monitor."
Gannaway said she had felt a "little intimidated" about leaving The Monitor for The Rocky Mountain News because of the reputation of excellence the photography staff in Denver has achieved. "But I feel a little better now," she said today.
"I think what I'm so excited about 'Remember Me' winning today is that this is a reflection on everything The Monitor has tried to do over the last decade, to take a story in our community and to find the universal truths in it, the truth of life, death, struggle, family, of pain and love," Habib said.
"Preston and reporter Chelsea Conaboy worked so closely together for two years on the story and they stayed so incredibly close to the family and walked that fine line between journalistic objectivity and becoming involved, and to tell the story in an honest way. Yes, it's partly a story about a woman dying, but the second part - after she's gone - is the struggle that made the story, of the husband working to hold the family together. It's a very complex story, beautifully photographed, with a lot of passion and with a lot of talent."
Gannaway joined NPPA in 2001.
Finalists in the Breaking News category were Mahmud Hams of Agence France-Presse for his photograph of a missile falling on a target in the Gaza Strip while young Palestinians scramble for safety, and the Los Angeles Times for a team entry of their coverage of last year's wildfires that burned across California.
Finalists in the Feature category were David Guttenfelder of the Associated Press for his portfolio of Vietnamese children afflicted by the toxic legacy of Agent Orange, and Mona Reeder of The Dallas Morning News for her essay on the disadvantaged people of Texas who are hidden amid the state's economic abundance.
Reeder's essay won first place two weeks ago in the Investigative Issue category of NPPA's 2008 Best Of Photojournalism competition.
The Washington Post today won an amazing six Pulitzer Prizes, including the Public Service award. "It's a crazy day, six of them!" du Cille told News Photographer magazine. It's the photographer's third Pulitzer Prize.
"It feels kind of weird," du Cille said. "I feel like everything happens for a purpose." The photojournalist left the picture desk in May 2005 to pick up his cameras and go back to shooting, feeling that he still had good work to do. Then in 2007 the Post's assistant managing editor for photography, Joe Elbert, decided that he wanted to go back to shooting too. On September 25, 2007, Post executive editor Len Downie named du Cille as the new assistant managing editor for photography – but the photojournalist didn't totally relinquish his cameras for the desk this time and continues to shoot.
"There's still lots to do, we're not done. We're going to work like hell to get the [photo] department where we want it to be," du Cille said from amidst the clamor of today's celebration.
In 1986 du Cille shared a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography with fellow Miami Herald staffer Carol Guzy (who is now also at The Washington Post) for their coverage of the Nevado Del Ruiz volcano in November, 1985. In 1988 du Cille won a solo Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for a photography essay about crack cocaine addicts in a Miami housing project that was published in the Herald's magazine, Tropic.
Over the years du Cille has been active in NPPA in various committee and leadership roles, including serving as the executive committee board representative in 2000, and he served on the organization's finance committee during a particularly difficult budgetary time in the early part of this decade. He has also served as a Pulitzer judge in the photography categories.
Du Cille has a journalism degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, and a graduate journalism degree from Ohio University in Athens. While studying at Indiana University he was a photographer and picture editor at the Indiana Daily Student, and he also shot for the Louisville Courier-Journal before moving to the Herald. While in high school in Gainesville, GA, he worked full time as a photographer for the Gainesville Times. He joined NPPA in 1981.
This year's Pulitzer Prizes mark the 92nd year the awards have been given to recognize the best in American journalism. The Pulitzer Prizes are given in the categories of journalism, letters, drama and music, and are administered by Columbia University in New York City. The Public Service winner receives a gold medal, while winners in the remaining 20 categories receive $10,000.
