Pulitzer Prize Review

Stanley Forman, the photographer of this Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, has won two awards in his life. One in 1976 and the following year in 1977 as well. In Boston, 1976, Forman took this photo of a mother and her grandchild plummeting down from a broken fire escape which won him his first Pulitzer Prize.

www.pulitzer.org/article/and-then-fire-escape-let-go

“And then the fire escape let go” - Stanley Forman

Below is a picture of Stanley Forman the photographer. Forman was born July 10, 1945, in Winthrop MA and worked at the Boston Herald where he shot both the photos that won him Pulitzer Prizes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Forman

As the Boston Herald American photographer stood shooting pictures around the fire scene on this July day, he happened to have his camera up, right as the woman and baby fell off the unstable fire escape which had broken underneath them. Metal and people went flying through the air. He quickly left the scene afterward in fear that an upset family member would take his camera away because he knew he had taken the most perfectly timed shot. An abundance of sadness came with the situation of course, including later on finding out that the baby’s grandmother had died in the fall, luckily the baby survived. He notes in many interviews that he was fearful of seeing them hit the ground so he turned away after he got the shot.

While visiting the Newseum last year I vividly remember seeing this photo in the Pulitzer Prize gallery. It really stuck out to me and when writing this review, I knew which photo I would choose right away. It sticks out to me so much because the photo is so perfectly timed that it looks like the women and baby are just still. Although you know there was so much chaos; screaming, crying, running, the photo itself seems so calm and posed. The way you see the flower pot completely intact but still falling is what really sticks out to me. The second plant has soil flying through the air and the metal parts of the

Surprisingly, although Forman was not paying attention to visual grammar, he happened to get the triangle golden rule element. Moreover, I noticed that it has a bit of the spiral effect because there is an uneven distribution from a common center where a lot is going on around them but the focal point and eye still are drawn to the two people falling.

This is Stanley Forman's second prize-winning photo. The name of the photo is "The Soiling of Old Glory" and was taken on April 5, 1976, during the Boston busing desegregation

protests.

Work Cited

Cliff, C. (2010, September 18). Boston Fire. Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/4999515947/in/album-72157623484633083/

Rothmyer, K. (1991). ‘And then the fire escape let go’. Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://www.pulitzer.org/article/and-then-fire-escape-let-go

Stanley Forman. (2020, February 16). Retrieved September 02, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Forman