The Pulitzer Prize for Photography and The World Press Photo of the Year

   

Pulitzer prizes, named after Hungarian-American newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) whose endowment funds the prizes, have been awarded since 1917.  Prizes are awarded annually in 21 categories for outstanding public service and achievement in American journalism, letters and music.

The Pulitzer Prize for Photography was awarded from 1942 until 1967 in 3 categories: spot news, breaking news and feature.  In 1968 it was split into two separate prizes, the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography and the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography (now called the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography).

I started looking into the Pulitzer photography prizes after preparing the item below.

Viewing the prize winning photographs from 1942 onwards is to see not only the march of history and events but also changing techniques in, and approaches to, photography itself.


The Press Photo of the Year awards also recognise excellence in photojournalism.  The awards are given in ten categories:  spot news, general news, people in the news, sports and action, sports reporting, current issues, daily life, portraits, arts and entertainment and nature.


The overall winner, the World Press Photo of the Year, is awarded to the image that "... is not only the photojournalistic encapsulation of the year, but represents an issue, situation or event of great journalistic importance, and does so in a way that demonstrates an outstanding level of visual perception and creativity."

From time to time in the future I will post Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year winning photographs, working through from 1942 to the present.  Some of those photographs have been the subject of previous Bytes.

The story below concerns the 1964 photography Pulitzer.