Miami Herald photog Patrick Farrell just won the Pulitzer Prize in Photography for his work on Haiti's terrible 2008 hurricane season that devastated the country. Here's an excerpt from the Miami Herald Story:
Veteran Miami Herald photographer Patrick Farrell has been awarded journalism's biggest award, the Pulitzer Prize, for his harrowing images of the victims of the storms that ravaged Haiti in 2008.
Farrell, 49, visited Haiti half a dozen times during last year's hurricane season, capturing scenes of the dead and the survivors of a series of storms that generated devastating flooding across the impoverished nation.
He was in Haiti the night Hurricane Ike -- the fourth storm to hit there in a month -- washed across the already overwhelmed countryside, drowning even more homes and people.
Farrell's published photographs, along with stories by Miami Herald Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles and Herald reporter Trenton Daniel, are credited with helping raise international awareness of the storms' toll on Haiti and its people's struggle to survive in the aftermath.
Links and whatnot after the jump (UPDATE AFTER THE JUMP)
From the Pulitzer.org:
For a distinguished example of breaking news photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence or an album, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Awarded to Patrick Farrell of The Miami Herald for his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike and other lethal storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti.
Finalists
Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Associated Press Staff for its haunting chronicle of death, destruction, heartbreak and renewal when an earthquake devastated Sichuan, China; and Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times for her valorous on-the-spot coverage of political violence in Kenya, capturing the terror as rebellion and reprisals jolted the nation.
Here is the link to a harrowing online slideshow that Patrick himself narrates: Here
--------------------------------UPDATE------------------------
Here's a video of the Miami Herald and Patrick, celebrating the win.
Miami Herald's Patrick Farrell wins Pulitzer Prize
Video by Miami Herald Staff
And here's a little background info on Patrick, who actually went to the same high school as I did, from the Miami Herald Story:
Farrell, a Miami native, has been a Herald staff photographer since 1987. He's a member of the class of 1977 at Christopher Columbus High, a Miami Catholic school, where he ran cross country and shot photos for the school yearbook. He graduated in 1981 with a bachelor of arts degree in television and film production from the University of Miami.
Farrell grew up in the High Pines neighborhood of unincorporated Miami-Dade County near South Miami, the seventh of 12 children born to Dr. James and Peggie Farrell.
Farrell says he owes his discovery of photography to an eye injury he suffered when he was shot in the right eye by a BB gun pellet while he was trick-or-treating on Halloween 1971. He spent a week with both eyes bandaged shut at Larkin General Hospital in South Miami.
His view of the world changed after his bandages were removed, and he began to pay more attention to the details and light around him, Farrell says. As a result of the eye injury, Farrell is a ''left-eye shooter'' and holds the camera up to his left eye. (Most people naturally shoot with their right eye.)
After he discovered photography, he destroyed a bathroom in his parents' home by turning it into a darkroom.
Farrell started his career working for several small community papers in Florida.
His Herald assignments have taken him to Turkey, Haiti, Cuba and throughout Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. He was part of the Herald staff that won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the coverage of Hurricane Andrew's devastation in South Florida.
Also, Damon Winter, NY Times photog, won the Feature Photography Pulitzer for his work covering the Obama's presidential campaign.
For a distinguished example of feature photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence or an album, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Awarded to Damon Winter of The New York Times for his memorable array of pictures deftly capturing multiple facets of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Finalists
Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Carol Guzy of The Washington Post for her powerfully intimate coverage of the perils and sorrow of childbirth in Sierra Leone, where women face the world’s highest rate of maternal mortality; and Sonya Hebert of The Dallas Morning News for her empathetic portrait of palliative care in a Texas medical center as terminally ill patients cope with the end of their lives.
Truly some amazing and inspirational work.
-Mingo
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