Who Deserves a Pulitzer Prize?

Kenji Nagai of APF tries to take photographs as he lies injured after police and military officials fired upon and then charged at protesters in Yangon's city centre September 27, 2007. Nagai, 50, a Japanese video journalist, was shot by soldiers as they fired to disperse the crowd. Nagai later died. REUTERS/Adrees Latif (MYANMAR)

Rachel blogged about all the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning photographers yesterday.

Then over at SportsShooter, Palm Beach-based photographer Tom Ervin created a thread entitled Is Latif image worthy of the Pulitzer Prize? stating:

"I don't think Latif's image should of won the Prize. I thought it lacked emotion, importance, lacked impact, (couldn't tell what was happening in the [sic] piic) graphic composition, and it just didn't have that gut wrenching feeling a person would have when viewing a Pulitzer as compared to say Moore's image."

A few camps emerged from the melee:

- Those who thought Ervin was an idiot
- Those who thought he was entitled to his opinion
- Those who reiterated the subjectiveness of contests in general.

I wrote:
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUUQi1ooEAs

"I don't think you can argue a position without considering the context of the image. For example, take Arko Datta's World Press Photo:

http://tinyurl.com/54t66e

"It's a tremendous photo compositionally. The woman in anguish, and arm moving into the frame. But it's significant because it represents 300,000 stories that were affected in a single event.

"Similarly, with Latif's image, consider that the Burmese government was cracking down like crazy by first killing buddhist monks in a society that revered the monks, then by cracking down on their citizens and the press.

"In the picture, I see a horde of people running from the police. That's marginally interesting. But I also see a soldier hovering over a photographer that is struggling to shoot a photo. We know because of the video and the witnesses that the soldier just shot Nagai in the back at point blank range. And we also know from the video that Nagai's first instinct after he was shot, was to lift his camera, literally with his last ounce of energy. The solider looked at him to make sure he was down for maybe one second. And after Nagai tries once to lift his camera, his is unable to muster the strength to lift it again.

"Latif captured an incredible moment because it illustrates: 1) the brazenness of the military, 2) is illustrative of the huge number of people that were affected, and 3) shows a member of the press corp literally dying as he tries to capture the news because he believed that showing what was going on in burma was the most important thing to do that day.

"Best composed? No. But lacking emotion or importance? I strongly disagree. When a government suppresses its people through corporeal harm and kills members of the media to prevent the story from getting out, it's important."

The Pulitzer organization doesn't have a strict set of criteria for selection of the image:
There are no set criteria for the judging of the Prizes. The definitions of each category (see Entry Forms or History page) are the only guidelines. It is left up to the Nominating Juries and The Pulitzer Prize Board to determine exactly what makes a work "distinguished."

Here's the runner-up image by AFP photographer Mahmud Hams showing a missile about to strike the Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Is the composition any better than Latif's image? Is it successful because it's the decisive moment? Isn't the killing of a photographer a pretty decisive moment?

Others felt that the New York Times' John Moore was deserving for his coverage of the Benazir Bhutto assassination. Are blurry images of a political leader's assasination better composed? Or is it the decisive moment?

On the scale of importance, I would rank the Gaza image the least important from a global perspective and the Bhutto assassination the most important.

Is there a clear winner here?

2 Comments

Well, this isn't going to win me any friends, but when I first viewed that picture this was my initial reaction:

1. what is the guy on the ground doing? (no disrespect at all intended, but it was not clear to me what the person on the ground was holding, let alone doing)

2. is this really the Pulitzer Prize photo?

I am firmly with Tom Ervin on this one.

This photo lacks:

- composition
- emotion - I mean where is it and what elements in the image show it?
- context - it could be any crowd anywhere in the world running away from soldiers. What parts of this photo show the actual context?

and to top it all off, it looks like a point and shot snap.

As for the decisive moment of the image and the question - 'isn't the killing of a photographer a pretty decisive moment?'

Absolutely it is a decisive moment. It isn't however enough on its own to make this the number 1 Pulitzer Photo. No way.

By Thomas Pickard