Palm Beach Photographic Centre to Present PULITZER BACK STORIES This Summer

Fatima NeJame, president and chief executive officer of the world-renowned Palm Beach Photographic Centre (PBPC), today announced that the next exhibition at the nonprofit organization would be Pulitzer Back Stories In Honor of the Pulitzer Centennial.

The new exhibition will feature a score of different eye-catching, thought-provoking images by numerous Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers & runners-up all courtesy of Zuma Wire, including Charles Porter IV, Renee C. Byer of The Sacramento Bee, photographers from Florida papers such as The Palm Beach Post's Gary Coronado, and more. Scott Mc Kiernan, CEO of ZUMA Press, is curating both the exhibition and two days of events, lectures and panel discussions by Pulitzer Prize winners on the weekend of May 14-15.

The exhibition at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre is one of a series of events across the United States to celebrate the Centennial Anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes, focusing on former Prize winners, their prize-winning work and the journalistic and cultural values that the award represent. The 100th class of Pulitzer Prize winners will be announced next week and will be handed out at dinner this fall at the home of the event, Columbia University.

"Our next exhibition is just the latest of several major shows celebrating excellence in photojournalism," says Nejame, who cited last summer's POYi (Pictures of the Year International) Best in Show Festival at the Photo Centre and the previous Seeing Double: The Best of DOUBLEtruck Magazine exhibition, which displayed 100 of the best photographs featured in the first decade of the award-winning quarterly magazine, which bills itself as "The World's Best News Pictures in Print!"

"Certainly, the Pulitzer Back Stories In Honor of the Pulitzer Centennial exhibition will further enhance the Photo's Centre's reputation for excellence among the world's photographic and photojournalism community," adds NeJame, who was recently selected to be one the reviewers at the prestigious fourth annual New York Portfolio Review, which was held early this month and sponsored by The New York Times Lens Blog and City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism.

The public is invited to a FREE opening reception of Pulitzer Back Stories In Honor of the Pulitzer Centennial on Friday, May 13, from 6 to 8 pm.

In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. In his will written in 1904, the legendary publisher established the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of public service by the press. In the years since, the Pulitzer Prize Board increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects.

The formal announcement of the prizes, made each April, states that the awards are made by the president of Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize board. This formulation is derived from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the seat of the administration of the prizes. Today, in fact, the independent board makes all the decisions relative to the prizes. In his will Pulitzer bestowed an endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a School of Journalism, one-fourth of which was to be "applied to prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."

A registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, the Palm Beach Photographic Centre is dedicated to the enrichment of life through photographic exhibitions, workshops, community programs, and other educational and cultural events that promote the photographic arts. Located in the City Center municipal complex at 415 Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach, the Photo Centre's hours are 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Thursday, and 10 am to 5 pm Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, call 561.253.2600 or visit www.workshop.org or www.fotofusion.org.

Photo by Renee C. Byer (ZUMA Wire).

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