Exhibit Of Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs Opens At National Constitution Center
By Cherri Gregg
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The National Constitution Center opens a new exhibit this week that showcases more than 150 Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs.
With one click, these images tell the stories of survival, hunger, death, grief, victory, love, war and the raw humanity behind it all.
"A lot of them have very emotional reaction," says Cyma Rubin, curator and producer of Caputure the Moment: The Pultizer Prize Photographs.
The exhibition includes photos dating back to 1942, when the Pulitzer board first opened the prize to photography.
The showcase lays out iconic images from the Joe Rosenthal photo of US Marines raising an American flag on Iwo Jima (top photo) to the Kevin Carter photo of a Sundanese child so weakened by hunger that a vulture is seen lurking in the background.
"These photographs have a strange power, a force that can carry human emotion across barriers of language time and space," says Rubin. "They have the ability to reach people to get through, to communicate quickly and clearly.'
The exhibit also includes details of the stories behind the photos, based on Rubin's interviews with the award-winning photographers. Stories like that of Carter, who committed suicide the same year he took his Pulitzer photograph.
"The photographer's job is not to take sides, but to tell the truth for better or for worse," says Rubin. "Often their work is a quest for justice. They can't change the world, but if they do their job right, they offer the world a reason for change."
The exhibit opens Friday and runs through the end of the year.
