NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 23 number 2 - Winter 2003

By Cyma Rubin, Business of Entertainment, Inc.

I started to research the Pulitzer Prize photographs in 1994. The work would eventually lead in 2000 to the first major United States exhibit of Pulitzer photos. What in the world, I wondered, do these pictures have in common? They do not pretend to be a complete look at history-the photography Pulitzers have been given only since 1942. They are not the country's most popular photos, they are only those from newspapers that chose to enter the contest. Many of them show blood and guts, but not all, and they certainly do not cover all of the wars of the second half of the twentieth century. So what do they have in common? Each of them has a life of its own. These photographs have a strange power, a force that can carry human emotions across barriers of language, time, and place. They have an ability to reach people, to get through, to communicate. Quickly and clearly, they say war is brutal and victory sweet, children are innocent, and life is fragile-and they say it equally to men and women of different classes and cultures. Perhaps most important of all, the very best pictures change the way we think about racism at home or a famine halfway around the world, about the miracle of birth, the pain of war, the joy of a family united, the sorrow of a loved one lost.

When photographers go to a battle or into a blizzard, they go for us. They are there because we would like to know what is going on but do not want to be there ourselves. Photographers are our eyes, and when they do it well, when they capture the moment, they help us see the unseen, know the unknown, and feel the things that connect us all.