WKU's Carl Kiilsgaard Wins Cliff Edom's "New America Award"
By Donald R. Winslow
© 2009 News Photographer magazine
ST. PETERSBURG, FL (March 25, 2009) – Student photojournalist Carl Kiilsgaard of Western Kentucky University has won Cliff Edom's "New America Award" in the National Press Photographers Association's Best Of Photojournalism competition today during judging at the contest's host site, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
"Wow," Kiilsgaard said when he was called with the news. "I was just walking out of class! That's great!"
Kiilsgaard won the Edom Award for his long-term documentary essay on some families living in Whitesburg, KY. They are the sons and daughters of coal miners and have grown up dealing with the problems of living in impoverished eastern Kentucky, where it is growing more difficult these days to find steady work and to raise their children.
The Edom Award recognizes excellence in photographic storytelling about rural or ethnically diverse people. It honors the contributions made to photojournalism by Clifton C. Edom (1907-1991), a University of Missouri School of Journalism professor, who co-founded the Missouri Photographic Workshop with his wife, Vilia, in 1949. “In urban communities and rural towns, the spirit of diversity is celebrated and witnessed in everyday life,” the criteria for the Edom Award says. “Our goal is to recognize award winning photographic storytelling about communities, groups, and issues in America that are often under-covered in the press.”
"The judges had a really hard time getting it down to two, and even after we got it to two we continued to go back-and-forth," Best Of Photojournalism judge Deanne Fitzmaurice said today. She's the 2005 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her documentary essay "Lion Heart."
"The Kentucky poverty story was our unanimous final choice. This picture story was very strong and it has incredible depth. The photographer had wonderful access. It looks like this photographer lived with this family. It’s an incredible depiction of life in poverty in a home where there are kids and the parents are addicted to drugs. The moments and documentary work are incredible.”
"It's a story that I started over three years ago now on a large family that lives in eastern Kentucky," Kiilsgaard told News Photographer magazine today.
"I started it as a way for me to explore an area and a culture that I knew nothing about. I'm from Oregon and I grew up the only child of two scientists, so I lived a pretty different life than the family that I photographed. Through being with them I got to learn a lot about myself, as well as how things work in another part of the country and a whole lot about life."
Kiilsgaard also won the Alexia Foundation student grant a few weeks ago for a "smaller edit" of the essay.
Kiilsgaard is a senior history major at WKU and is from Corvallis, OR. He has interned at the Bucks County (PA) Times, the Napa (CA) Register, and The Palm Beach Post. He was one of Getty Images Reportage’s Emerging Talent picks in 2008. For winning the Alexia Foundation grant the student photojournalist was awarded a full tuition scholarship to study photojournalism at Syracuse University in London in the Fall of 2009.
There are no runners-up for Cliff Edom's "New America Award," only one photographer is recognized with the honor. But this year the judges wanted to acknowledge that the second picture story they were considering for the Edom Award was "exceptional, and in need of recognition." That essay was by freelancer Jenn Ackerman and it was about Correctional Psychiatric Treatment Unit at the Kentucky State Reformatory. The essay finished in first place in the Non-Traditional Photojournalism Publishing category in judging earlier in the Best Of Photojournalism 2009 competition.
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Best Of Photojournalism judging at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the contest's host site, has been coordinated by Thomas Kenniff, who is NPPA's director of sales and contests, and NPPA's executive director Straight, along with Poynter's Kenny Irby and Al Tompkins.
The Best Of Photojournalism competition and judging is sponsored by Apple's Aperture, Canon, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the St. Petersburg Times, and the National Press Photographers Association.
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