For 20 years, the Pulitzer Center has supported journalism that goes beyond the headlines to reveal what might otherwise remain unseen.

Photojournalism has been central to this work since our earliest days. We support visual storytellers who help communities understand not only what is happening, but what it means. The hundreds of photographers we’ve supported over the years span all continents and photographic approaches. What ties their work together is their commitment to using images rooted in human experience to document the systemic forces behind some of the most defining issues of our time, including moments of peace and conflict, the climate crisis, a global pandemic, technological transformation, and more. By focusing on the people and communities most impacted by the issues they’re covering, Pulitzer Center-supported photographers have made complex and often abstract realities seem tangible, deeply personal, and even relatable.

This exhibit presents some of the best of those images that still hold relevance today. Individually, the images capture singular moments in time. Together, they form a visual archive of a changing world and remind us that human-centered imagery does more than record events: It creates connection, deepens understanding, and continues to resonate long after the cameras are put away. In viewing this exhibit, visitors are encouraged to reflect on the power of visual journalism to shape our collective understanding of history.

 

About the Artists

 

Enayat Asadi is an Iranian-born freelance photographer and visual researcher based in Germany. Born in Bandar Abbas, he began photography as a self-taught practitioner and has developed long-term projects exploring fundamental questions of human existence, tragedy, and resilience.

His work focuses on social justice, human rights, and psychological themes, with a particular emphasis on marginalized communities. Key projects include: 2017-2019: Rising From the Ashes of War—documenting the aftermath of the Afghanistan war and the challenges faced by Afghan migrants and undocumented refugees; winner of the 2019 World Press Photo Award; 2019-2020: Hard Land—examining the lives of Bakhtiari nomad women in Iran’s Zagros mountains, focusing on resilience against violence and harsh conditions; supported by the Pulitzer Center; 2021-2024: Survivors of Death Row—an ongoing project on individuals sentenced to death, highlighting justice and human resilience; 2024-present: Migration and Identity Projects—exploring identity crises, statelessness, and precarious living conditions following his relocation to Germany.

Asadi’s work has received international recognition and has been exhibited globally, including at Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan. He believes in the power of photography to connect past, present, and future, revealing the resilience of the human spirit.

 

Dominic Bracco II is a photographer, journalist, author, educator, writer, and social practice artist based in Baja California Sur, México.

Bracco places his work in installations that include sculpture, video, and performance to create narratives about human connection and the cycles of life and death. His work points to geography, history, the natural world and how we interact with it. His process is informed by journalistic research and an animistic world view. Bracco’s work often captures the everyday struggles and triumphs of ordinary people, as well as scenes of nature that are often overlooked.

He has received broad recognition, including the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship and the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award. Twice his writing was selected for EFECINE. Bracco’s multimedia installations have been exhibited at El Museo del Hijo del Ahuizote in Mexico City and at Cortona On the Move in Italy. His work is featured in collections at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Worcester Art Museum, and in private collections.

His reporting has been published in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the BBC.

 

Joshua Cogan is an Emmy Award-winning photographer, anthropologist and ethnobotanist whose assignments have taken him to 65 countries to create work that expresses his deep love and curiosity for human life, culture, and spiritual ecology. Recognition for his work has come from the National Academy of Television and Sciences, The Muse, and Webby Awards. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Eye Film Institute of the Netherlands. He has been a featured speaker at TED and SXSW.

His clients include National Geographic, Smithsonian Institution, World Health Organization, United Nations, Puma, New Balance, Newsweek, ESPN, The New Yorker, HBO, Discovery Channel, and many others.

Cogan specializes in telling stories of people and the land they inhabit, whether it be 10th generation Totem carvers from Alaska or pioneers of hip hop in his hometown of Washington, D.C. With his decades-long study of sacred practices alongside first nations communities, Cogan is equally focused on his work as a community builder and facilitator. He founded and stewards the men’s community Journeymen, which is dedicated to restoring men’s full humanity by deepening lives through communal practice.

 

Xyza Cruz Bacani is an award-winning Filipina interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her experience as a second-generation domestic worker in Hong Kong informs her practice and engagement in less visible, erased, and underreported world events. Her works explore migration, transnational identity, climate change, and labor.

Bacani received her M.A. in Arts Politics at New York University in 2022. She has been recognized as one of Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young Leaders, Artpil’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers, Forbes’s 30 Under 30 Asia, and BBC’s 100 Women of the World. Her artistic accomplishments are documented by the Philippines House of Representatives under ‘House Resolution No. 1969.’ She received multiple grants from the WMA Commission, New York State Council of the Arts, and the Pulitzer Center, and was one of the Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellows. She is also the author of We Are Like Air (2018).

Bacani’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Kadist Collection Paris, San Francisco, Foreign Correspondents Club Hong Kong, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, New York University Abu Dhabi, and numerous private collections worldwide. 

 

Andrew Cutraro was trained and schooled as a photojournalist before converting to cinematography. He was represented by Redux Pictures for the rosters of ESPN and TIME magazines—assigned to some of the biggest stories of the last three decades: 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the turmoil in Venezuela, Hurricane Katrina, the election of Barack Obama, and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as long-form social justice projects on American rural health care, prison reform, and policing. He earned multiple national awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association.

That experience and ethos informs his approach in his commercial portfolio, where he is hired for shoots that require discretion and the ability to work in sensitive environments with an eye on authenticity. He has shot for a variety of production companies, ad agencies, and marketing units on brands like Volkswagen, Walmart, Ketel One, New Castle, Wilson, Becks, Motorola, Ariat, and Major League Soccer.

In serialized documentaries, he has shot for programs for Disney+, Paramount+, and Major League Baseball Network.

 

Anna Donets is a freelance photojournalist from Kyiv, Ukraine. In her work, she focuses on daily life in Ukraine, especially in Kyiv, during the war. Donets is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, majoring in Public Relations.

Donets has published her work in The Kyiv Independent, where her photos also appeared in the printed magazine “The Power Within.” She completed their journalism school and undertook a photo internship with the publication. Her photographs have also been featured by the Associated Press.

Donets also completed a mentorship program by the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers, where she worked in the group led by Sasha Maslov.

 

Sean Gallagher is a British environmental photojournalist and filmmaker based in Beijing, China.

Originally trained as a zoologist, he earned a BSc (Hons) from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne before receiving photographic training as an intern at Magnum Photos London.

Since moving to China in 2006, his work has focused on global environmental issues, particularly the climate crisis across the Asia-Pacific region. Having lived in China for nearly two decades, he has traveled to all 22 provinces and speaks Mandarin.

His major projects—including Bali–Plastic Paradise, Cambodia Burning, and Tuvalu–Beneath the Rising Tide—have won international awards and been featured by outlets such as National Geographic, The Guardian, and CNN. His work has also been exhibited at multiple United Nations Climate Change conferences.

In 2014, Gallagher was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) in recognition of his contributions to documenting environmental issues in Asia. He is represented by Redux Pictures, one of the world’s leading photo agencies.

 

Cédric Gerbehaye is a Belgian documentary photographer and filmmaker. His projects focus on the human condition and human rights, exploring places both foreign and familiar. He is the author of several books: Congo in Limbo (2010), Land of Cush (2013), Sète#13th (2013), D’entre eux (2015), and ZOONOSE (2022). La Peine (2023), his first feature-length documentary, is an intimate and unprecedented plunge into the depths of prison life.

His work has received international awards, including the Olivier Rebbot Prize from the Overseas Press Club, a World Press Photo, the Amnesty International Media Award, and the Lucas Dolega Prize. He has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Guardian, GEO, Stern, and Le Monde. He is also an Explorer for the National Geographic Society and a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine.

His photographs are part of the collections of the FoMu (FotoMuseum) in Antwerp, the MEP (Maison européenne de la photographie) in Paris, the Musée de la photographie in Charleroi, and the MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts) in Houston.

 

Natalie Keyssar is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on the personal effects of political turmoil and conflict, youth culture, and migration. She has a BFA in Painting and Illustration from The Pratt Institute.

Keyssar has contributed to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Bloomberg Businessweek, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and California Sunday Magazine and been awarded by organizations including the Philip Jones Griffith Award, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, PDN 30, Magenta Flash Forward, and American Photography. She has taught New Media at the International Center of Photography in New York, and has instructed at various workshops across the US and Latin America with organizations such as Foundry, Women Photograph, the Pulitzer Center, and the IWMF. Her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center, the Magnum Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the IWMF, among many others.

She is the winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Emerging Photographer Award, the 2019 PH Museum Women Photographer’s Grant, and a winner of the 2023 Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund. She is a Canon Explorer of Light and Co-Founder of the NDA Workshops series with Daniella Zalcman.

 

Andre Lambertson is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker committed to documenting stories of transformation. Lambertson has created photo essays on social issues for magazines, books, foundations, and museums, including TIME, National Geographic, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, the Sunday London Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, USA Today, The Ford Foundation, The Smithsonian Museum and The Corcoran Museum. His awards include five Pulitzer Center grants, the George Soros Foundation Media fellowship, the Webby award, and more.

Lambertson brings more than 25 years of visual storytelling and a highly-developed artistic style and a deep understanding of criminal justice issues and the unique rhythms of urban America. He co-directed and shot The Whole Gritty City, a documentary about marching bands that help combat teen street violence in New Orleans, which aired on CBS and won a Christopher Award. He shot and produced Charm City, which documented three years of unparalleled violence in Baltimore and the people on the frontlines. The film aired on PBS and was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2019. He was a cinematographer on Dick Johnson is Dead, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won a Special Jury Award.

 

Jason Motlagh is journalist and filmmaker drawn to under-reported stories in challenging environments, with a focus on conflict, migration, and human rights. He started reporting from Afghanistan in 2006 and became TIME magazine’s Kabul correspondent. Now a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, he’s worked in more than 60 countries spanning Southeast Asia to Latin America for National Geographic, Outside, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Economist.

As founder of Blackbeard Media, Motlagh produces, directs, and hosts news documentaries for Al Jazeera English, National Geographic, Vice on Showtime, and others. His first full-length feature documentary, about the ancient sport of buzkashi and the war in Afghanistan, premiered in 2023. His recognitions include a National Magazine Award, Overseas Press Club Award, Kurt Schork Award, Daniel Pearl Award, and an Emmy. He lives in Baja California, Mexico, with his wife, two sons, and three horses.

 

Jake Naughton is a Mexico City-based photographer making commissioned work for a variety of editorial clients including TIME, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and Bloomberg Businessweek, as well as commercial clients including Airbnb, Apple, Chase Travel, Expedia, Four Seasons, and Lufthansa.

Alongside commissions, his artistic practice explores queer identity in the present moment. His personal work takes the form of long-term, in-depth projects, like “This is How the Heart Beats,” about East Africa’s LGBTQ community, “Both Sides of the Veil,” which showcases a strange limbo for India’s queer community, or “When We Were Strangers,” which explores and deconstructs love through the prism of his own relationship with his partner.

 

Paolo Pellegrin is a photojournalist from Rome. He studied architecture at Università La Sapienza and photography at Istituto Italiano di Fotografia. In over thirty years of work, he has been focused on issues connected to the human condition, from wars to the effects of global climate change, trying to be a witness for our times.

Pellegrin is a winner of many awards, including eleven World Press Photo awards, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant for Photography, a Leica Medal of Excellence, the Lucie Foundation Honoree of the Achievement in Photojournalism Award, and more. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including the Maison Européenne de La Photographie, Rencontres d’Arles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and more.
He has been a Magnum Photos member since 2005.

His books include Event Horizont (2023); La Fragile Meraviglia (2022); Des Oiseaux (2021); Alps–Aosta Valley (2019); Paolo Pellegrin, curated by Germano Celant (2018), Terre Spezzate (2016); 100 Photos of Paolo Pellegrin for Press Freedom (2013); Paolo Pellegrin (2012); Dies Irae (2011); Photo Poche (2010); As I Was Dying (2007); Double Blind (2007); Kosovo 1999-2000: The Flight of Reason (2002); L’au-delà est là (2001); Cambogia (1998), and Bambini (1997).

 

Marcio Pimenta is a Brazilian explorer, photographer, filmmaker, and writer. His work is dedicated to witnessing the history of humanity, marked by both achievements and losses, through the observation of territories, cultures, and landscapes in transformation.

He is a member of The Explorers Club and a National Geographic Society Explorer, and has also been invited to speak at events such as TEDx. In recent years, he has developed projects in regions including the Amazon, Iraq, Antarctica, and Patagonia, exploring themes that connect science, memory, and the human presence in the natural world. His first photobook, Yazidis, was published in 2020. In 2024, he released his first documentary film, Hoy’ri, filmed in the Atacama Desert. He is currently preparing the release of his first literary book, based on an expedition across Patagonia following the routes of Charles Darwin.

 

Ángela Ponce is a Peruvian documentary photographer and photojournalist who grapples with social issues in the Latin American context. She focuses on long-term projects that approach climate change, extractivism, and armed conflicts in Indigenous communities. She is a National Geographic explorer and frequent contributor for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Reuters. Her photographs have also been published in Los Angeles Times, Geo Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BBC, Die Zeit, The Guardian, NPR, El País, among others.

 

Marcos Quinones is an independent Puerto Rican/Trinidadian photojournalist from the Lower East Side of New York City. He is a current student at Emerson College pursuing a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, mixing the disciplines of pre-law, journalism, and media. At Emerson College, Quinones is an Aspire Scholarship recipient. Before attending Emerson, Quinones graduated from Guttman Community College. In his first year of college, Quinones was selected as a Guttman-Emerson James Baldwin Fellow, which allowed him to study abroad in multiple countries. He also presented his writing at the 39th Annual National Undergraduate Literature Convention in Utah.

Quinones has been recognized at Guttman for his academic excellence as an honors student and was also elected as president of an honors society. His work has been commissioned and published by outlets including Documented. He also uses his social media to self-publish his reports, which often focus on protests in America, including the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, pro-Palestinian student-led protests in 2024, and, most recently, protests against ICE operations in Minneapolis.

 

Allison Shelley is an independent documentary photographer primarily focused on social justice issues as they relate to women worldwide.

Her work has been honored and exhibited internationally and is regularly featured in publications like National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She has photographed in nearly 40 countries, including Haiti, where she was based for over a year following the 2010 earthquake, and is the focal point for several of her long-term projects.

Shelley is co-founder and co-director of the 300-member nonprofit Women Photojournalists of Washington (WPOW) and has worked as director of photography for Education Week newspaper and staff photographer for The Washington Times.

She is a multiple Pulitzer Center grantee and a fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Reporting Project.

 

Tomas van Houtryve is a Paris-based artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose works interweave investigative journalism, philosophy, and metaphor. Van Houtryve makes images using a wide range of processes, ranging from 19th-century wet plate collodion to thermal imaging and Augmented Reality. His projects challenge our notions of identity, memory, and power, often by highlighting the slippage of wartime structures into everyday life.

Van Houtryve’s works are widely exhibited and have gained significant attention among cultural institutions and the press. In 2016, the International Center of Photography acquired Van Houtryve’s Traces of Exile video installation, making it the first video added to the ICP’s permanent collection. In 2014, van Houtryve’s Blue Sky Days series was published in Harper’s Magazine as the largest photo portfolio in the magazine’s history. Formal honors include the Roger Pic Award (2019), CENTER Producer’s Choice Award (2018), Hasselblad Foundation Award (2017), ICP Infinity Award (2015), World Press Photo, Second Prize (2015), Visa pour l’Image Young Photographer Award (2006) and numerous others.

He was selected to document the Notre-Dame cathedral of Paris after it was devastated by fire in 2019. Other publications include Lines + Lineage, published by Radius Books, and Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism.

 

Irina Werning is a freelance photojournalist who focuses on personal long-term projects. She is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Werning has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in history (Buenos Aires), and a master’s in photojournalism (London).

She won the Ian Parry Scholarship (The Sunday Times Magazine and Getty) in 2006, the Emerging Photographer Fund—Burn Magazine (Magnum Foundation) grant in 2012, and she took first place in the Sony World Photography Awards, in the portraiture category, in 2012.

Werning was chosen by TIME magazine as one Nine Argentinian Photographers You Need To Follow in 2015, and her book Back to the Future was chosen by TIME as one of the best photobooks of 2014.

In 2020, she was awarded the Emergency Covid Grant (National Geographic) and a Pulitzer Center Reporting Grant in 2021. She won the World Press Photo competition in 2022 in the Story, South America, category.

 

Maye‑E Wong is a Senior Editor on Reuters’ Wider Image and Special Projects team, based in New York. A visual journalist with decades of international experience, she is known for deeply reported, human‑centered storytelling that connects global events to everyday life.

Before joining Reuters, Wong spent over 20 years as a photojournalist with the Associated Press, reporting across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Her work focused on conflict, human rights, migration, and accountability, with an emphasis on ethical access and subject trust. Her photography documenting Rohingya women who fled Myanmar, part of a major AP investigation into systematic sexual violence, earned the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award and the Ancil Payne Ethics in Journalism Award. Her portraits of survivors of abuse within the Catholic clergy received a Pictures of the Year award.

From 2014 to 2018, Wong served as AP’s lead photographer for North Korea, producing rare coverage of daily life inside the country. That body of work earned National Headliner Awards and contributed to the AP’s Oliver S. Gramling Award.

A multiple‑time Pulitzer Center grantee and former World Press Photo jury member, Wong continues at Reuters to lead international, prize‑winning projects centered on humanity.

 

Daniella Zalcman is a Vietnamese-American documentary photographer based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a 2021 Catchlight Fellow, a multiple grantee of the National Geographic Society, and the Pulitzer Center, a fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the founder of Women Photograph, a nonprofit working to elevate the voices of women and nonbinary visual journalists.

Her work tends to focus on the legacies of western colonization, from the rise of homophobia in East Africa to the forced assimilation education of Indigenous children in North America. Her ongoing project, Signs of Your Identity, is the recipient of the Arnold Newman Prize, a Robert F Kennedy Journalism Award, the FotoEvidence Book Award, the Magnum Foundation’s Inge Morath Award, and part of Open Society Foundation’s Moving Walls 24. You can find her work in National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Mashable, BuzzFeed, TIME, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

Zalcman is a proud member of the Authority Collective and Diversify Photo, a co-founder of Indigenous Photograph, a co-founder and creative director of We, Women, and a co-author of the Photo Bill of Rights.

20/20: 20 Years, 20 Photos

Featuring: Various Artists

Curated by: Nathalie Applewhite Gabriela Brenes Jazmyn Gray Katherine Jossi Grace Jensen Sarah Swan

Locations

ON VIEW AT: #57

View Location Details Download a detailed map of this location Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza

1 Water St
Brooklyn, NY 11201

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The views and opinions expressed in this exhibit are those of the exhibition artists and partners and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Photoville or any other participants and partners of the Photoville Festival.

 

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