Although she did not take this photograph, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Carol Guzy offered this heartfelt insight into what it means to be a great photojournalist. “Someone once told me that empathy was not imagining how you would feel in a particular situation, but actually feeling what the other person is feeling.”
Grossfeld’s words, “Welcome to my nightmare,” are a powerful statement as he laments how difficult it is to witness the plights and strife of humans going through the unimaginable.
In this photograph, an Ethiopian mother is sitting with her young child. She is covered in a shroud and has an ornamental nose piece, bracelets on both wrists and a beaded necklace. Her hands are placed affectionately and protectively on top of her child’s head. She looks down and away from the camera. Her face is gaunt. Her left arm that isn’t covered is very thin. Her eyes are wide and filled with sadness, despair, hunger, pain, anger, frustration and shame. The mother sits cross legged as her child sits on her. The child wears nothing but a necklace. As he blankly stares into the camera, he is the epitome of starvation and malnourishment. His eyes are very big, with the iris and pupils taking up most of the whites of the eyes. His eyes are full of hunger and almost devoid of life. There is no expression on his face. His body looks like skin on a skeleton. Every bone in his entire ribcage is easily visible. His arms and legs are the perfect outline of bones. There is not an ounce of flesh on his little body. The background behind them is somewhat sparkly. The shrouded mother with her young is reminiscent of a depiction of the Mother Mary and baby Jesus. The message here is monumental. In moments of devastation, humanity needs to take notice. Stan Grossfeld surely knew this and obliged, as hard as it was to do.
This small selection of the multitudes of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs shows moments in time that needed to be preserved. They show history. They show events. They show devastation. They show hope. They show the good and the bad. The photojournalists behind the camera know that an award-winning photo is not the end goal, as they are just doing what they are meant to do. It also is not something that can be planned: it happens in the moment. It’s continually taking pictures of all that is life, no matter the who, where, why, what and how.
