Customer Reviews

Moments: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs

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My husband gave me this book for Christmas and I couldnt wait to start reading (?) it. It is a collection of the pulitzer prize winning photographs of the last 50+ years. The book begins with mostly World War images but ends on a light note with Clinton and his saxophone. The pages lead you through history through pictures, not so much words and by the end I was crying so hard I couldn't see the print. It really made me think about some of the inhumanities that people have lived (and not lived) to tell about. I loved this book until the last few pages when 1999 ended with photographs of Bill & Monica. It turned sour at that point because every other picture held a noble meaning. This book is worth the money for the hours that you will spend flipping through the pages.

Hal's done a great job of behind-the-scenes reporting for this book. The photos are good, too. But if you want a look at a museum-quality catalogue of these photos, try going to Newseum.org and looking at the online store for their book, The Pulitzer Prize photos...

Beautifully done book with very interesting photos and most importantly stories about the photos. An interesting fact is that the cover(1957 photo) photographer, Bill Beall, was a marine photographer in the same outfit as the photographer that took the Iwo Jima picture(1943 photo) and just by chance landed on the other side of Iwo Jima Island.

The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most well known, respected, and coveted awards. It is no doubt that the photos chosen to receive the Pulitzer recognize human nature at its most extreme- compassion and brutality. This book is a collection of the most famed and heartwrenching photographs over a spanning several decades. Included in the collection are pictures from the Vietnam War, Oklahoma City bombing, famine, rites of passage, parents standing next to the ocean which swept their son to sea, election of U.S. President Clinton, and other events of various magnitude. The pictures (both black/white and color) are printed on large heavy paper, which allows the true nature of the picture to project their true nature.

One of the best aspects of this book is the short narratives that accompany each picture. The narratives answer many questions about the picture, such as what the photographer was thinking, his intention with the photo, how he came across the situation, his feelings, and so forth. I found the narratives to be one of the most gratifying aspects of this book.

This is a wonderful collection of photographs that will make you think about life at its extremes, and therefore appreciate everyday life.

Considering the last edition of Moments: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs came out nearly 20 years ago, it's great that somebody saw fit to update this book to include the stupendous photos that have won the Pulitzer in the last 20 years, like Kevin Carter's photo of the starving Sudanese girl and Charles Porter's photograph from Oklahoma City. And the narratives about each photo, coupled with the technical details in the back, make this book still a cut above a mere exhibition of the winners.

But apparently they must have had some trouble tracking down copies of the older Pulitzer winners for this edition, because the reproduction on some of them is, well, kind of crappy. For a few of them, it looks like they literally took flatbed scans from the pages of the old book and used them in this one; in some of them, like the 1955 winner, you can actually see the pixel lines!

It's still a fantastic book on the whole...I guess I'm just a little disappointed that a book cataloging some of the most important news photographs of the 20th century has such mediocre reproduction in places.

This wonderful book will be appreciated by anyone who has enjoyed the photography that has been such an important element of the news.This book covers each year between 1942 and 1999,so while it is good for the period covered;it's starting to get a little long in the tooth--6 years to be exact.
When one thinks of the humongous number of photographs taken on such an endless number of subjects,it is a major job to decide what is the best.One thing certain is, with so much to choose from,the winner should be a photograph that,no matter who looks at it,one should feel that it is undisputably great. Maybe it should also be such a photograph that is unrepeatable.
I have to admit, that is how I felt when I finished the book.
Since a main criteria seems to be that it is a newsworthy or timely photo; It would seem to me taat the photograph must catch such a moment.Many of the winners do just that.The Iwo Jima Flag on page 21,The Babe Bows Out on page 29,Oswald Shot,Live to the World on page 61,Saigon Execution on page 79,and others are great photographs of momentous importance;that had to be captured at the time. Many of the photographs in the second part of the book are not as momentous.A picture to win a Pulitzer should be immediately recognized by all, and one should have instant recall of it. As the years went on ,it seems the judges have altered their criteria and have chosen photographs that one doesn't recall at the time;and more importantly are not one-of a-kind momentous photographs.In other words they have chosen human interest,third world poverty and such things that can be found all over the world,and it matters little whether the photograph was taken at one time or another ,or in one place or another. This has increased in later years and the winners for the 90's are anything but exceptional. In 1979, the award went to photographs of a storm in Boston.There was nothing so unusual about such a storm or the photographs.There must have been thousands of similar ones taken.Then, when one looks at what won in 1986,scenes that exist by the thousands in any city;the award overlooks one of the greatest photographs,even though so disasterous,in the century. The January 1986 ,explosion of the space shuttle Challenger,73 seconds after takeoff,killing all astronauts on board.The pictures chosen for 1987 and 1986 pale by comparison.
However,the book does an excellent job of covering the Pulitzer awards for photographs;and in ith end whether I concur with their choices is a mute point.

This book captured all those essential moments in time, & the title said it all, really. It started from year 1942 & ended in 1999. Just like the movie, Pleasantville, it started with B&W pictures but as the technology gets better & more viable, colour pictures took over but still, never underestimated the raw drama & power of B&W pictures, though. The editing of this splendid coffee table book is quite clever by segregating it into various eras describing the technology & techniques available during that time (involving taking, printing, transmitting the pictures) & then, drawing a parellel with what's going on in this world right there, right then. I didn't appreciate the intensity of the pictures when I was younger but as I'm older now & sitting through reading thru this book, it brought back many memories, some good, some bad. And this book is also clever enough to provide time graph with more pertinent pictures to run us through the time passed. It's quite emotionally draining & disturbing at times to read that some photographers risked it all including their lives just to share the moments with the rest of the world, & how much the pictures affected some photographers here that they took away their own lives. All & all, this is a book that celebrates humanity, abhors at evil that humans would do to one another, reminds us all of the vulnerability against Mother Nature, the appreciation of simple things in life, & so forth. A very engaging book & worth reading. Highly recommended.

The stories are as good as, if not better than the picture