The images are striking.
A toddler, his tiny sock caught on barbed wire as he’s passed through a barricade in Albania. A couple holding hands as they walk down a street filled with burning wreckage from a Haitian earthquake. A young refugee from the war in Sierra Leone jubilantly raising her remaining arm in triumph against the background of the Statue of Liberty. A dog patiently waiting for his owner outside a home surrounded by the flood waters of hurricane Katrina.
There is no more fitting woman to cap our celebration of National Newspaper Week than the only journalist to win four Pulitzer Prizes, photographer Carol Guzy.
It is the connections she captures — the sorrow and joy, the tragedy and triumph — that makes it impossible for us to look away. As she told National Geographic “I take pictures to enlighten people to something they are not aware of. If we keep taking the pictures and keep telling the stories, we can make it better. I really believe that.”
Guzy was headed towards a career in nursing when a boyfriend gifted her a camera for her birthday. It was as if she found her life’s purpose. She began taking photography classes that led to a professor recommending her for a job with the Miami Herald. It was there that she won her first Pulitzer in 1986 for her coverage of deadly mudslides in Columbia. Among her many awards and honors are three other Pulitzers in 1995, 2000, 2011. Those came for her work covering the refugees in Kosovo and the civil unrest and earthquake in Haiti.
A master of longform, documentary photography, Guzy has traveled the world reporting on both manmade and natural disasters. Forging relationships with people is one of her superpowers and many of those she’s met along the way she now considers family. “Truly the only way to tell a story with genuine moments is to walk the journey with people and establish trust that you are there not to merely take pictures but to give an understanding of their situation to others.” (Adorama)
Currently a member of Zuma Press, an independent press agency and wire service, her work has been published in National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, ESPN and The Miami Herald, among others. To see more work follow her on Facebook and @carolguzy on Instagram.
Featured image above: Nikon Ambassador Carol Guzy by Andrea Pritchard