Notable: Winner of numerous awards for his photographs, primarily of war, famine, and genocide, including Magazine Photographer of the Year seven times (from the National Press Photographers Association) and the Robert Capa Gold Medal five times (from the Overseas Press Club of America)

Education: Double major in art history and government; currently overseeing transfer of his archive—more than 500,000 images—to the Hood Museum, where students and scholars will have access

“When I’m working, I’m having an immediate relationship with what I’m seeing. It’s spontaneous and intuitive. Reality has a kind of surface tension, and it’s a matter of penetrating that. You don’t do that with your eyes. You do it with your spirit.”

“A lot of people think that war photographers close themselves off, which enables them to do the work they do. The opposite is true. We have to open ourselves up, and that can be quite painful. That’s how we’re relating to the people we’re photographing, and that translates to a mass audience. There are physical obstacles, and there are emotional obstacles, and they can both be quite daunting.”

“I was a student at Dartmouth during a highly charged time. Photographs of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were very influential in my wanting to be in that tradition. The social value of photography was very apparent to me.” 

“Putting oneself in harm’s way is not something I recommend. Being able to do it comes down to a sense of purpose: People need to know the cost of war on both sides. Sometimes, they need to be shaken out of complacency. The parties involved in a conflict should not have control over what is communicated about it.” 

“My colleagues and I rarely know what effect our work has. We believe people will care if we show them something worth caring about—and if there’s injustice and unnecessary tragedy happening, they will want something done about it.” 

“I’m gratified to know that photographs I took of Romanian orphans in 1990 and the famine in Somalia in 1992 moved people to act. I was told by a representative for the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] that publication of my Somali photographs in The New York Times Magazine enabled the ICRC to mobilize donors and save 1.5 million lives. That made everything worthwhile.”

“The basis of journalism 101 is to be in the right place at the right time. With war photography that means being in the worst place at the worst time. Even knowing where that place might be, let alone what it takes to get there, requires a lot of effort. By the time I pick up my camera, the hard work has been done. At that point, it’s a creative act to find a way to express what is usually a tragedy.”

“It takes a while to regain my balance after I’ve been on assignment. My friends help. I fly-fish from time to time. I read, and I enjoy art. I’ll come back from a war zone and go to an art museum where I’m reminded, ‘Humanity is also capable of this, of creating beauty out of nothing,’ which I find miraculous.”