Stan Grossfeld
Stan Grossfeld
Stan Grossfeld was born in New York City and went on to Rochester Institute of Technology to earn his BA in Professional Photography in 1973. He began his career as a journalist at The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J., where he worked for two years. Grossfeld then moved on to work for The Boston Globe in 1975 and has since been named New England Photographer of the Year five times.
Grossfeld has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His first win was for Spot News Photography in 1984 for his coverage of the effects of war on the people of Lebanon. In 1985, Grossfeld won his second Pulitzer in Feature Photography for his series of photographs of the famine in Ethiopia and for his pictures of illegal aliens at the Mexican border. In 1994, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Photography for a year-long series depicting the social, medical and environmental crises caused by the depletion of natural resources.
Biography text taken from Grossfeld's Boston Globe bio page.
1985 Winner
Feature Photography
"For his series of photographs of the famine in Ethiopia and for his pictures of illegal aliens on the Mexican border." - Pulitzer Board
Ethiopians cross into Sudan to a refugee camp 180 miles from their town. Western relief officials say that up to 7 million people in Ethiopia are “at risk of starvation.”
Ethiopians line at sundown in the Tigray Province for the long overnight march toward the Sudanese border.
A youngster is so hungry that he licks the flour from an empty burlap bag as he waits in line for food in the Tigray Province.
The wealthy head into Sudan with their camels and belongings.
Near the Gash River in the Tigray Province, a woman and her son are told there is no room for them on the convoy heading to Sudan.
Mohari Ager, 3 months, is too weak to nurse at his mother’s breast. He is fed milk from a spoon but died two hours later on Nov. 22, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.
A child is too weak to shoo away flies as he rests on his mother at a transient camp.
A mother and child clasp hands in an intensive-care hut in Tigray.
An Oxfam doctor holds the hand of an emaciated baby.
Meselg Taka, her bare breast showing through tattered rags, carries her grandchild on her back towards Sudan.
An emaciated man lies in front of sick children at the Tukulababa refugee camp.
Refugees fleeing to food relief camps in Sudan move down a dried out riverbed in Tigray Province, Ethiopia.
A rebel of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front rests.
Children reach for a sardine can of murky water at the Tukulababa refugee camp.
Berhamy, an Ethiopian refugee, sips water from a dish after giving birth at Zele Zele in Tigray Province.
Two Mexicans without legal entry permits sneak into the United States along the girders of a bridge connecting Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas.
Aliens apprehended by Border Patrol await questioning.
A Border Patrol officer halts youth trying to cross Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas.
Behind the Scenes
Seven of RIT's Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists received the university's Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing Sept. 22, 2011, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
Pictured, from left: Ken Geiger, Dan Loh, Robert Bukaty, Anthony Suau, William Snyder, Paul Benoit and Stan Grossfeld.