Transcriber: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Denise RQ
In November of 2007, I'd taken vacation days
to volunteer and mentor Asian students
in a free photography workshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
As I wandered the streets,
a small child approached me with a baby in his arms.
He had piercing brown eyes, and a face that will never leave my mind
as he pleaded for one dollar,
"Please, one dollar madam, please, please, please, for my baby!"
The relief organizations make clear
that such donations on the street often line the pockets of exploiters
rather than put food into the mouths of the exploited,
but my heart went out to the boy.
I gave him the dollar and watched the smile split his face.
That little face still haunts me.
So does the face of Mohammed,
a malnourished toddler I photographed with a few grains of rice in hand,
in Mali, West Africa, three years earlier.
And so does the face of 10-year-old Derek,
who I photographed moving skeleton-like, through his home in California,
as he battled neuroblastoma, a rare form of childhood cancer.
The searing power of these faces and the emotions behind them,
make me the documentary photojournalist I am.
Without these feelings, I could not record
the intimate human emotions and the stories I'm going to show you.
For me, photography isn't a profession.
It goes much, much deeper than that.
I have an innate curiosity that drives me beyond the obvious.
My father was a police chief in a small town in upstate New York.
One Saturday, when I was about 12 or 13, our home was shot at.
Eight bullets were imbedded in our cars, our house, and the trees outside our home.
As the bullets were flying, my father screamed, "Hit the deck!"
as he threw open the door and ran outside to shoot back.
Everyone hit the floor except me.
I ran into the next room
frantically found a pair of binoculars and started peering out the window.
I was consumed with the desire to be an eyewitness.
I had no fear.
Now as a professional eyewitness to the world,
I try to show a side of life that people may not have seen before.
My creed is to do so with objectivity, credibility, compassion, and honesty.
I'm passionate about photojournalism and the power of the enduring still image
to inform and bring understanding to issues.
In this fast-paced world, where the emphasis is on immediacy,
a still photograph stops time,
it gives the viewer a moment to think, to react, to feel.
How better to inform the public
than with documentary photojournalism on an intimate scale?
It's immediate and compelling, but to be done well, it also takes time;
time to connect, time to see, and time to become invisible.
All these are the essence of compelling photojournalism.
Through my pictures, I would like to show you
how documentary photojournalism can give back to society
by engaging our compassion,
empowering those without power or influence
and inspiring us to be better by capturing the images of those who are.
At its best, documentary photojournalism offers to the world
a glimpse of life's deeper meanings.
Many times after displaying the sometimes painfully personal,
but inspiring Pulitzer story, "A Mother's Journey",
I was asked how I could make the photographs.
My answer was and is, "How could I not?"
I'd like to give you a brief introduction to my work
to show you the diversity of emotions in still images,
and the story telling power of photojournalism.
And this is the part where you all have to wake up
because we're going to go through some pictures,
and I'm just going to give you the title
and I want you to think about how did these photographs engage you.
OK, "The Birds".
"Shattered by Nasty Weather".
"Police Funeral".
"Mardi Gras Riots in Seattle".
"Parents Murdered".
"Tibetan Monks Protest Olympic Torch".
"Low Income Housing";
this is not a portrait, it's an actual moment.
None of these pictures are portraits, they are all real life moments.
"Disabled Parents".
"Teenage Alcohol".
"Silence and Abuse".
"Migrant Farmers".
"Beauty"
"Think Outside the Box";
this always tells me you never know what to expect in life.
And then, this is Arnold celebrating Hanukah.
Now I'm going to transition to longer term stories.
Days after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,
thousands of evacuees filled the Astrodome in Houston, Texas
and temporary motels in Shreveport, Louisiana,
all struggling to find loved ones and cope with the tragedy.
FEMA did not want the media inside.
But once I found a way inside, the people embraced me.
They wanted their story told, and though they lost everything,
their spirit remained because they still had each other.
I spent several months chronicling the lives of Thomas and his son Alexander
after his wife committed suicide from post-partum depression.
Thomas gave up his restaurant business
so he could dedicate every moment to his son, making him gourmet meals
and using a hair dryer to dry him like his mother used to.
Often, he took Alexander to the park and meditated by his wife's favorite tree.
Although he was devastated by her death
I found inspiration in the relationship he forged with his son.
"I felt I lost the love of my life, my soul mate, and my friend,
and I look forward to Alexander for inspiration now," he said.
"I’m so grateful I have him."
I spent a year documenting American women soldiers at war -
going to war.
New military recruits are told to show birthmarks, piercings, tattoos, and scars
for identification in case of injury or death.
Soldiers who just returned from Iraq struggle to assemble a gun after cleaning.
A 19-year-old army recruit holds bullets, "I wouldn't hesitate to use my weapon.
Do you want to come home alive or in a casket?"
In her final moments before deploying to Iraq,
a soldier says goodbye to her children at home.
She wears a fake wedding ring
to ward off sexual harassment from male soldiers.
Her bunk at Fort Lewis, Washington is filled with reminders of her children,
and is a little messier than the men's barracks.
I love the contrast of her dainty shoes.
After returning from Iraq,
soldier suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder,
losing her house, and her truck.
A photo of her when she was named
Outstanding Noncommissioned Officer of the Year
is too painful for her to display.
On the one year anniversary of her death in Iraq,
family members grieve the last female in their family line.
The soldier had confided to her mother that she was frightened in Iraq.
She definitely said
it was the toughest thing she had ever gone through.
Capulapan, Mexico is a small town,
two hours of switchback roads in the verdant mountains north of Oaxaca.
Here, scientists from UC Berkeley, California
had discovered the imprint of biotechnology
in the hillside farm of Alberto Cortes and his wife Olga in 2000.
The challenge was to put a human face on a science story.
I found that corn was more than the main staple of food,
but a way of life.
Farmers were upset
that their century old native strain had been tainted
with genetically modified corn, possibly from their government store
where they accepted food aid from the USA to feed the rural poor.
"We don't want it," Olga said, "We don't know the consequences."
In 1996, the University of California, Davis, began an effort to help
the West African nation of Mali
using the promising new tool of agricultural biotechnology.
With money earned from cloning and patenting a gene
from a hardy species of wild rice native to Mali,
UC Davis hoped it would be able to give something back.
First, scholarships for Mali students,
and later, disease-resistant rice to help feed the impoverished country.
When I made the trip to Mali, eight years later, in 2004,
Mali's people, the Bella specifically,
had not reaped any reward from the cloned rice.
Poverty was extreme, malaria and child mortality were high,
with medical supplies and clinics scarce.
Children didn't go to school because they were needed to work
making coal, bricks, and herding animals.
"Those who don't work, don't eat," said a village chief with an axe in hand.
The closest school was an hour away by donkey.
It had no supplies, and its lone teacher taught two classes simultaneously.
Billions of dollars are devoted to cancer research,
but very little is given to help families
with the emotional and financial challenges they face
to spend time with their dying children.
Single mom Cyndie French and Derek Madsen opened a window into that world.
Their story was one of a family tragedy
but also one of a mother's boundless determination and love.
Derek and Cyndie taught us that dying is hard enough;
our society should make living through it easier.
I spent one year documenting this story.
Cyndie breaks the rules at the hospital and races her son down the hallways
to avoid one of his meltdowns.
She is determined to make every moment count.
Here she gets news he needs surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.
Cyndie breaks down after learning
one of Derek's medical appointments has been rescheduled.
She has given up her business at a loss to care for her son.
This is a turning point where Derek is actually trying to comfort her.
She says she can't even imagine not having this photograph.
After hearing she needs to call hospice, she allows Derek to drive her car
because she knows he will never have that opportunity.
And this was a horrific scene.
Derek is tearful as he shouts at his mother.
I can hear his voice echoing in the halls,
"I'm done, mom," he refuses radiation to shrink his growing tumor.
His mother and doctor sink to the floor; they can't convince him.
Cyndie feeling the financial strain hits a car wash
to try and earn money to pay the bills.
She brings the jug of money home to try and cheer Derek up.
"Maybe we can buy a PlayStation 2 with the money," she says.
"No mom, I think we need to pay the rent."
Cyndie surprises Derek with a can of silly string
she bought at the Dollar Store after a doctor's appointment.
She then, meticulously, picks it all up off the ground.
Cyndie throws herself on the floor in his room in despair
after placing a flower near his head.
At this point his tumor's distended his stomach
and made it difficult for him to see.
Hospice was scarce,
and Cyndie was spending 24 hours a day trying to care for her son.
For me, this was the culmination of the entire series.
Here the family is having a fight about how they are going to pay the bills;
the rent, the funeral costs, and Derek is caught in the middle.
No family should have to struggle in this kind of situation.
Cyndie takes Derek for his last walk outside.
For days, she never leaves the house
in fear she won't be there for him in his last moments.
She tearfully rocks her dying son, Derek, 11,
at the song "Because We Believe."
Cyndie sings along with Andrea Bocelli in a whispery voice.
"Once in every life, there comes a time,
we walk out all alone, and into the light."
At the funeral,
she was determined to carry Derek throughout this whole journey
and remind people of their time and compassion
to give back to other families
so they would not have to struggle as much as they did.
Thank you.
(Applause)