Photojournalist Donates Pulitzer Photo to NPC
Carol Guzy, a Washington Post photojournalist, presented the Club with a copy of one of her three Pulitzer Prize-winning photos at the Nov. 17 meeting of the Photography Committee.
The 1999 photo she presented to the Club shows Agim Shala, 2, being passed through a barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparents at a refugee camp in Kukes, Albania. His grandparents, who had no idea if their family was alive, reacted with unbridled delight.
The photo is among those by Guzy and two othersthat won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography “for their intimate and poignant images depicting the plight of the Kosovo refugees.”
Guzy shared the 1986 Pulitzer for spot news photography and was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer for spot news photography.
After presenting the Pulitzer photo to NPC President Alan Bjerga, who accepted it on behalf of the Club, Guzy shared some of her images and memories of a career that has ranged from “ecstasy during the fall of the Berlin Wall to the sadness of Haiti’s perpetual open wound.”
“I wouldn’t trade this job for the world, though at times I have been screamed at, knocked down, cameras ripped off my neck, trampled by mobs, trampled by mobs of photographers, arrested, shot at, acquired back pain as a personal friend and was deemed obsessive by my editors too numerous times to count. I do prefer the word ‘dedicated’,” she said.
“It has been said that when you make a photo, you take a piece of the soul. As well, you give a part of yours. There are pieces of my soul scattered all over the earth. Indeed it's what makes me whole.
“It’s haunting to voyage into so many different souls. Sometimes ours are the only ears that hear the silent screams. Trying to translate what you experience becomes a formidable task. It’s never exactly the same as walking in another’s shoes. Photojournalists are chameleons by nature. We inhabit someone’s skin intimately enough to tell their story yet remain an impartial spectator of their world. It’s a delicate balance in which the lens can be a shield from your personal feelings, but only a temporary respite."
Guzy also expressed her concern about a “shoot the messenger” mentality toward the media, which “seems to be escalating. Seeing too much violence in the newspaper over morning cereal can generate a helplessness that numbs or infuriates readers and fingers start pointing at the press for running those disturbing images. Certainly there needs to be sensitivity in news coverage but there is danger in censoring reality.
“Yes, those photos are uncomfortable to view but for many in this world there is no breakfast cereal or freedom from fear. Perhaps that’s what society should find mostintolerable, not the pictures that remind us of it.”
-- Jack Williams, [email protected]