Carol Guzy was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and lived there until 1978 when she completed her studies at Northampton County Area Community College, graduating with an Associate's degree in Registered Nursing. A change of heart led her to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida to study photography. She graduated in 1980 with an Associate in Applied Science degree in Photography.
While at the Art Institute, she interned at The Miami Herald and upon graduation was hired as a staff photographer. She spent eight years at the newspaper before moving to Washington, DC in 1988 where she became a staff photographer at The Washington Post through 2014. She is currently freelance .
She is the first journalist to receive a fourth Pulitzer - for coverage of the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Previously she was honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and the devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia. She has received a third Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo.
She has been named Photographer of the Year for the National Press Photographers Association three times and eight times for the White House News Photographers Association and has earned many other prestigious awards in her chosen profession of photojournalism. She specializes on long-form documentary human interest projects, news and feature stories, both domestic and international and is currently a contract photographer with ZUMA Press.
“To be a photojournalist or even just a caring person you can’t overemphasize having empathy. It’s a blessing and a curse — it undoubtedly helps me create images that resonate and connect viewers to the narrative of others, but also makes any heartbreak a thousand times harder. We are not walking cameras and what we witness changes our soul. I also spend time in order to document as truthfully as possible with genuine and intimate moments.
We can never really walk in another’s shoes, and our greatest challenge as photojournalists is to tell the narrative of others as best we can. People open their lives to our cameras and it’s a great responsibility. Editors have deemed me ‘obsessive’ more times than I could ever count. I prefer the word ‘dedicated.’ Establishing trust and waiting for those priceless and sometimes unexpected moments takes patience and tenacity. And yes, a bit of OCD!”
Major Awards & Honors
Four Pulitzer Prizes for:
1986 = Mudslide in Amero, Colombia
1995 = U.S. military intervention following a military coup.
2000 = Refugees in Kosovo, Albania.
2011 = Earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 100,000.
Overseas Press Club of America
2018 -- Robert Capa Gold Medal Award
1996 – John Faber Award
National Press Photographers Association
1990 -- First woman to receive Newspaper Photographer of the Year
1993 – NPPA Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award
1997 -- NPPA Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award
2009 – NPPA Best of Photojournalism, Enterprising Picture Story
White House Press Photographers Association
2021 – Lifetime Achievement Award
Photographer of the Year – Eight times
Chris Hondros Memorial Award
2020 – International News
Newseum (Washington D.C.)
2019 -- Al Neuharth Award for Excellent in the Media
Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1997, 2009 and 2010
Missouri School of Journalism
2013 – Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished
Service in Journalism
Photo Imaging Manufacturers and Distributors Assoc.
2012 – Photographer of the Year
The Sidney Hillman Foundation
2009 – The Hillman Prize “for journalists, writers
and public figures who pursue social justice and
public policy for the common good”
Visa Pour L'Image
1995 - Visa d'Or Award for News Photography
Leica
1994 - Medal of Excellence
Nikon Ambassador
2018 to the Present
Boston University
2022 - Hugo Shong Lifetime Journalism Achievement Award
Major Stories
Decades of coverage in Haiti of political anarchy, turmoil and natural disasters including two massive earthquakes
The collapse of the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall
A mudslide in Colombia in that killed more than 23,000
The Ethiopia famine
Infant and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone
Turkish offensive into Syria
Sailing to Cuba with spinal cord victims
The Rwanda Exodus of Hutu refugees
Hurricane Maria devastation of the Puerto Rico
Nomads in Mali
The last surviving actors who played the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz
Rescuing animals in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina
Firefighter funerals in NYC after 9/11
Sierra Leone amputees adapting to prosthetics in the US
Mother Teresa’s funeral
Recapturing Mosul, Iraq from the control of ISIS
A chimpanzee sanctuary for abandoned research animals.
U.S. abandonment of the Kurds during Trump’s Presidency
Immigrants seeking asylum into Southwestern US.
104-year-old Miss Classie caring for her younger sister suffering from Alzheimer’s
Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
Hurricane Andrew
Collapse of the Soviet Union
NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s dog fighting operation and the successful rehabilitation of the animals
Strife in Somalia
Separation surgery of conjoined twins
A young man’s triumph over the streets at a DC high school
The decline and death of Carol’s mother and sister, who both succumbed the Alzheimer’s within a short time of each other