Ruth Fremson
A native New Yorker, Ruth Fremson never expected to go into
photojournalism until her senior year of college. After studying
graphic design at Syracuse University for the majority of her
undergraduate career, expecting to pursue a career in the visual arts,
she serendipitously took a photography course taught by Robert Gilka at
Syracuse's London center. In less than three weeks she was convinced
that she had found a new path in life. After Syracuse, Ruth attended
the graduate program at Ohio University, landing an internship at The
Washington Times during the summer of 1988. This led to her first staff
position at the Washington Times where she worked from 1989 until
September, 1994 when she joined the staff of The Associated Press. Ruth
was first based in Charlotte, North Carolina photographing a lot of
sports but also covered the reinstatement of President Aristide in
Haiti by the American armed forces and the end of the civil war in
Bosnia. In 1996 she was transferred back to Washington, D.C. to cover
the White House and spent the next two and a half years documenting the
Clinton administration with short stints in London for Princess Diana's
funeral, the Pope's historic visit to Cuba and the Atlanta Olympics
among other assignments. Ruth was part of the AP's team to win the
Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for their coverage of the Clinton impeachment.
In 1998 she was posted overseas in the AP's Jerusalem bureau where she
covered the Mideast conflict , stories in Egypt, and the war in Kosovo.
She worked there until The New York Times hired her in 2000 and brought
her back to the U.S. to work at her 'home town' newspaper. Since then,
her assignments have ranged from the presidential campaigns of John
McCain (2000), Al Gore, and Howard Dean, the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001 and its aftermath in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the
Salt Lake City Olympics, the war in Iraq, more trips to the middle east
where she continued to cover the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. From
2005 through 2011 she made repeated trips to India, recording this
changing and developing nation. In 2012 she worked on the
groundbreaking 'Snowfall' project which earned writer John Branch a
Pulitzer prize. She spent a year documenting the life of a homeless
child, Dasani, in 2013, which helped change New York City's policy
towards the homeless. Besides being part of both teams to win the spot
news and feature photography Pulitzer prizes for The New York Times in
2001, she has earned awards from the White House News Photographers'
Association, the National Press Photographers' Association and the New
York Press Photographers' Association. Her work has been exhibited in
several shows and can be found in numerous books.