By Stacey Goldberg & Jon Dumais
Hal Buell, author of Moments: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographs was welcomed to campus on October 26. He lectured to students and faculty about many of the Pulitzer winning photographs of the last century.
In addition to the lecture, many reproductions of the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs featured in his book are now in the Grossman gallery in the Williams Visual Arts Building.
The lecture was sponsored by the galleries and the president’s office. Local documentary filmmaker, Lou Reda, was connected to Buell and was a key player in persuading the faculty to bring him to Lafayette.
Metzgar Professor of Art History Robert Mattison was excited to bring in Buell because his presentation tied well with the growing interest in photography courses and the film and media studies department.
“All of this tied together and made this the perfect opportunity to do this show,” Mattison said.
During the lecture, Buell outlined to listeners the process of creating news photography. His lecture followed along with a slideshow of award-winning and non-award-winning photographs, as well as accompanying video explanations from their photographers.
According to Ekrem Bermek ‘12, the lecture was “very interesting because normally the power of such a photo overpowers who actually takes the photo. You don’t ask, ‘who takes that picture?'”
To be Pulitzer Prize-winning, a photograph must be published in an American daily newspaper. Photographs included civilians fleeing south over Taedong River by Max Desfor, Kennedy and Eisenhower by Paul Vathis and a Saigon execution by Eddie Adams, all of which were important during their time of publication due to the cultural context.
“An artist is free to deliver their message and state their message in any way they please using the grammar of photography,” Buell said. “A journalist does not have that freedom.”
Assistant Professor Karina Skvirsky, who teaches photography as well as American Studies courses at Lafayette, required her Photography II students to attend the lecture. Skvirsky believes that the lecture was beneficial to her students because the Lafayette art department teaches photography as a fine art.
“It’s really great for thet exposure to this [journalistic] photography that has to due with current events and history and volatile situations, and also how the photographer herself or himself has to respond to an event in a very quick manner.”
Art major Imogen Cain ‘12 “[doesn’t] plan on going into photojournalism, but as an art major and photographer seeing the images and learning about them was fascinating,” she said.