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Brennan Linsley's shots from the Pulitzer-winning
AP photo team: The coffin of U.S. Embassy guard Bakari Nyumbu, above,
is passed into a grave beneath a blanket inscribed with Koranic writing,
during a Muslim burial ceremony. Below, female family members pray for
him in front of his house. Muslim tradition in Tanzania dictates that
women not attend funeral ceremonies.
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Photos courtesy AP
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CU alum Linsley
wins Pulitzer Prize
Powerful images from the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa last year brought journalism's most prestigious honor to a former School photojournalism student in April.
"I am overjoyed our maverick photojournalist Brennan Linsley is sharing in the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography," said Paul Moloney, a former instructor who taught Linsley in the early 1990s.
Linsley, in a call to the School from Nairobi, said the award caught him by surprise.
"When someone told me, I was speechless. AP tries to keep Pulitzer entries pretty quiet. I had a feeling there was an entry, but I really didn't know," he said.
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Brennan Linsley
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Linsley, 31, was part of the Associated Press photo team that won the Pulitzer for its coverage of the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. The explosions killed 224 people and triggered U.S. air strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan.
"His two pictures of the Bakari Nyumbu funeral are emotionally charged," Moloney said. "He definitely employs the eight senses--sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, common sense, sense of humor and sense of wonder--in his photojournalism."
Linsley joined AP as a Los Angeles stringer in 1994. A year later he was given a position in Nicaragua, and he transferred to Rwanda almost two years ago.
"My first year in Rwanda, when I would leave the capitol to go to the north, I knew that people were ambushed regularly along the route. We would just hold our breath and try to go fast, and we'd travel during the safest daytime hours," he said.
Linsley isn't the first CU alum to win a Pulitzer.
"I've now shared photography with two Pulitzer winners," Moloney said. "Dave Curtin ('78) used to talk photo technique with me when he was in sports at the Greeley Tribune. Curtin later won a Pulitzer at the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph for his coverage of a recovering burn victim.
Linsley expressed gratitude for Moloney's teaching.
"My exposure to Paul was something I treasure because he was so fresh. The guy has so much courage. He was really open to talking about pictures from any point of view. He had no boundaries and always encouraged me to experiment," he said.
What Linsley will do next isn't certain.
"I'm in a holding pattern right now," he said. "I might go to Zambia. The situation with street kids is said to be really out of control."
Linsley also won third-place this year in the National Press Photographers Association's Picture of the Year contest. As a student at CU, he won international honors for photos taken of the no-man's land on the U.S.-Mexico border, and he won awards for the photos taken in former Iron Curtain countries during the breakup of the Soviet Union.
His Pulitzer photos can be viewed at www.ap.org/pages/apwin/index.html.