Skip to main content
The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Spot News Photography

Charles Porter IV

For his haunting photographs, taken after the Oklahoma City bombing and distributed by the Associated Press, showing a one-year-old victim handed to and then cradled by a local fireman.

Charles Porter IV accepts the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography from George Rupp, Columbia University President.

Winning Work

(April 19. 1995, Charles Porter IV distributed by Associated Press)

"I see something run toward the left corner of my eye. I turn with my camera; it's a policeman carrying something. I snap the frame just as the policeman hands it to a fireman. The fireman turns, and he's holding this infant. He just holds it there for a couple of seconds. I take one shot." -Chuck Porter

(April 19. 1995, Charles Porter IV distributed by Associated Press)

Biography

Charles Porter was a credit officer at Liberty Bank in Oklahoma City when his photograph of a firefighter cradling a wounded baby at the Oklahoma City bombing won the Pulitzer Prize.

Porter credits 1982 winner John White of Chicago with advising him to "keep a loaded camera in my car at all times." Porter's camera was on the back seat when he went to retrieve it on the morning of the bombing. Porter's photograph, distributed by The Associated Press, garnered numerous honors, including the British Picture Editor's Award and the National Headliners Award. 

Porter is a freelance photographer.

-- from The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment edited by Cyma Rubin and Eric Newton (2000, The Newseum)

 

 

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Spot News Photography in 1996:

Jerome Delay

For his dramatic photographic coverage of the Middle East and Bosnia (Moved by the Jury from the Feature Photography category.)

Staff

For a portfolio of searing images of the war in Chechnya.

The Jury

Marty Claus(chair )

vice president/news

Frank Denton

editor

Carol Guzy*

staff photographer

Tim J. McGuire

editor/general manager, reader customer unit

Wickliffe R. Powell

editor

Winners in Spot News Photography

1995

Carol Guzy

For her series of photographs illustrating the crisis in Haiti and its aftermath.
1994

Paul Watson

For his photograph, published in many American newspapers, of a U.S. soldier's body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by a mob of jeering Somalis.
1992

Staff

For photographs of the attempted coup in Russia and the subsequent collapse of the Communist regime.
See All Spot News Photography

1996 Prize Winners

See All 1996 Winners