What if we had never seen a photo of the soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima? What if Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald had never been captured on film? What if the images of the twin towers falling on 9/11 were only images in the minds of those who were there? Thanks to photojournalists, we don’t have to ask these questions. Photojournalists understand the importance of documenting history as it unfolds before them. It takes courage to keep your finger on the shutter and bear witness, but that is exactly what they do. The film “The Pulitzer Photographs: A Glimpse of Life” takes a look at photos that have won one of the industry’s highest honors. But what sets a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph apart for this distinction?
The first Pulitzer Prize for photography was awarded in 1942. The black and white photo was taken by Milton Brooks. It shows a group of angry men from the United Automobile Workers union beating a well-dressed man wearing a tweed coat and leather gloves. He is a strikebreaker. They are striking for higher pay and better working conditions. One man holds a small bat in his raised hand. His tongue is sticking out with the effort, frozen forever in the moment before it strikes the back on the bent form of the strikebreaker. Prize winners aren’t always pulled form headline news, though.
In 1957, photographer William C. Beal captured a police officer bent over talking to a small boy. Behind them is a crowd of parade goers. The 2-year-old boy had been trying to cross the street when the officer intervened. Their adorable standoff is a familiar sight to any parent who has ever tried to reason with a toddler.
Headline news won the prize again in 1963. The award went to the now famous photo of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Like a scene from a gangster film, the men all wear tailored suits and fedora hats. Oswald shrinks back, his mouth open, his eyes closed. Ruby, twice his size, pulls his gun and shoots. At the exact same moment, photographer Robert H Jackson shot with his camera, forever preserving the moment in time.
Eight years later, in 1971, another shooting would win the prize. John Filo was a photography student at Kent State University. He captured the terrible aftermath when the National Guard gunned down student protestors at his college. In his photo, 14-year-old Mary Vecchio kneels in a dark pool of blood. Her mouth is agape in a cry of anguish. The blood comes from the body lying face down on the pavement in front of her. Seconds earlier, student Jeffrey Miller was exercising his right to free speech. Now he will never speak again.
Sometimes the Pulitzer Prize isn’t about covering a single event, however. In 1980 photographer Erwin H. Hagler won the Pulitzer for his series on the American cowboy. One of his most iconic cowboy photos is a closeup of a man wearing a battered cowboy hat. As he takes a pull on his cigarette, he gazes off into the distance. Stubble shadows his chin in contrast to his bright, white shirt.
The prize in 1991 went to another series of photos. This time the photos, taken by William Snyder, were of the unfathomable conditions at a Romanian orphanage. The photos are hard to look at. Shot in black and white, one particularly haunting image shows a young child lying in a crib. On a dresser next to the chipped, metal crib sits a fancy doll and a bottle of liquid. The child in the crib looks like a tiny old man: feathers of white hair, skeletal face, fingers curled into claws. Looking at the photo, it is difficult to imagine this child lived much longer after it was taken.
So, what makes these photos stand out from thousands of others? They capture our humanity. A small girl running naked down a dirt road shows us the human price of dropping a bomb. A child seeking comfort on her mother’s lap at her father’s funeral reminds us that an assassination takes more than just a life. Children joyfully playing outside a housing project puts human faces on the issue of poverty. A Pulitzer Prize winning photo asks us to remember that, behind every issue, behind every headline, behind every topic hotly debated on a political platform, there is the face of a human being. And each of those faces has a story.
