Palm Beach Photographic Centre Presents
Pulitzer Back Stories
In Honor of the Pulitzer Centennial

Public is Invited to FREE Opening Reception and to Witness BACK STORIES by Pulitzer Winners on May 14

WHAT: Pulitizer Back Stories Museum Exhibition Opening and Panel Discussions
WHEN: Saturday, May 14th, 2016 – Panels starting at Noon till the 6pm Exhibition Opening
WHERE: The Palm Beach Photographic Centre
415 Clematis St, West Palm Beach, FL 33401 Tel 561.253.2600

Palm Beach Photographic Centre will host an exhibition and talks honoring Pulitzer Back Stories in Celebration of the Pulitzer Awards Centennial.

The new exhibition will feature over a hundred different eye-catching, thought-provoking images by Pulitzer Prize-winning Photo-Journalists spanning last five decades, going back to The Palm Beach Post 1970 winner, moving reportage on stark poverty only miles from where today’s exhibition is being shown by staff photographer and only in his twenties at the time, Dallas Kinney, to the most recent Pulitzer awarded just last week.

Highlighting the show is the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography, by the REUTERS Photography Staff: Yannis Behrakis, Alkis Konstantinidis, Alexandros Avramidis, Bernadett Szabo, Laszlo Balogh, Michael Dalder, Srdjan Zivulovic and Stoyan Nenov. Winning for a set of gripping photographs, each with its own voice, that follow migrant refugees hundreds of miles across uncertain boundaries to unknown destinations.

Followed in the gallery by last year’s impactful 2015 Pulitzer, the amazing complete coverage of Ferguson tragedy and aftermath, which went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Photography Staff composed of David Carson, Laurie Skrivan, Robert Cohen, James Forbes, Christian Gooden, Huy Mach and Lynden Steele, “for powerful images of the despair and anger in Ferguson, Missouri, stunning photojournalism that served the community while informing the country.”

Also in this once in a life time collection of excellence in journalism, is one of all time icons – the who can one forget – the heart wrenching iconic picture of Oklahoma City Firefighter carrying a baby from wreckage of the just bombed out Alfred H. Murray Federal Bldg. by 1996 Pulitzer winner Charles Porter IV of ZUMA Press.

Come hear their moving Back Stories, especially the 1970 winner Dallas Kinney of The Palm Beach Post, an essay on poverty of Migrant Farmers. The images and BACK STORY of the 2007 winner Renée C. Byer of The Sacramento Bee, haunting incredible reportage of a mother’s struggle to help her cancer ridden son ‘A Mother’s Journey’.

Then there’s the Pulitzer turned major Hollywood movie by reporter Paul Watson of The Toronto Star and his pictures which led to a the movie ‘Black Hawk Down’ being done. To round the presentation out there are many single images for over last 45 years and their back stories, such as a rare sports related Pulitzer – the 1985 PULITZER for Spot News Photography to Rick Rickman, Brian Smith, Hal Stoelzle and Todd Buchanan, of The Orange County Register and their David vs. Goliath, underdog back story about their coverage of the memorable 1984 Olympic Games and more, much MORE!

The Best in Show Festival 2016: PULITZER BACK STORIES, will start at noon, with panels from winners in the show, in Palm Beach Photographic Centre Studio on second floor, featuring Pulitzer winners and editors of their staffs. Come witness history and people who documented it for you and then stay for the Opening at 6pm.

Scott Mc Kiernan, CEO of ZUMA Press, is curating both the exhibition and hosting lectures and panel discussions by Pulitzer Prize winners on Saturday May 14, 2016, all free and open to the public, as part of the PBPC’s Third BEST IN SHOW FESTIVAL.

‘The Pulitzer is more than an award – it is a proclamation, to the world, of EXCELLENCE and DEDICATION! Important ideals to Joseph Pulitzer, a man who created the awards and he himself a crusader and man who never relented. Thank you Mr. Pulitzer for rewarding excellence in the pursuit of truth.’ Curator Scott Mc Kiernan states, ‘The show has 100 images ranging from one of the most famous ones, of a running crying girl in Vietnam, escaping a bombed temple, in 1972 by Nick Ut, to the most recent winner from a few days ago – the 100th Pulitzer year’s winner from the amazing photo staff of Thomson Reuters on Migrants.’ Adds Mc Kiernan, who himself just won the prestigious JIM GORDON – Editor of the Year Award from National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

The exhibition at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre is one of a series of events across the United States to celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes, focusing on former Prize winners, their prize-winning work and the journalistic and cultural values that the award represent. The 100th class of Pulitzer Prize winners will be announced next week and will be handed out at dinner this fall at the home of the event, Columbia University.

“Our next exhibition is just the latest of several major shows celebrating excellence in photojournalism,” says Nejame, who cited last summer’s POYi (Pictures of the Year International) Best in Show Festival at the Photo Centre and the previous Seeing Double: The Best of DOUBLEtruck Magazine exhibition, which displayed 100 of the best photographs featured in the first decade of the award-winning quarterly magazine, which bills itself as “The World’s Best News Pictures in Print!”

“Certainly, the Pulitzer Back Stories exhibition will further enhance the Photo’s Centre’s reputation for excellence among the world’s photographic and photojournalism community,” adds NeJame, who was recently selected to be one the reviewers at the prestigious fourth annual New York Portfolio Review, which was held early this month and sponsored by The New York Times Lens Blog and City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The public is invited to a FREE opening reception of Pulitzer Back Stories on Saturday, May 14, from 6-8pm.

The public is also invited to a FREE series of lectures and panel discussions, to accompany the show, starting at noon at the Photo’s Centre Studio by some of winners, on Saturday, May 14, from 12-6pm.

About the Pulitzer Prizes:

In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. In his will written in 1904, the legendary publisher established the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of public service by the press. In the years since, the Pulitzer Prize Board increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects.

The formal announcement of the prizes, made each April, states that the awards are made by the president of Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize board. This formulation is derived from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the seat of the administration of the prizes. Today, in fact, the independent board makes all the decisions relative to the prizes. In his will Pulitzer bestowed an endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a School of Journalism, one-fourth of which was to be “applied to prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education.”

About the Palm Beach Photographic Centre:

A registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, the Palm Beach Photographic Centre is dedicated to the enrichment of life through photographic exhibitions, workshops, community programs, and other educational and cultural events that promote the photographic arts. Located in the City Center municipal complex at 415 Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach, the Photo Centre’s hours are 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Thursday, and 10 am to 5 pm Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, please call 561.253.2600 or visit www.workshop.org or www.fotofusion.org.