Evan Vucci ’00 part of Associated Press team to win top prize for breaking news photography

An RIT professional photographic illustration alumnus was part of a 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning team announced earlier today.

Evan Vucci ’00, a chief photographer for the Associated Press (AP) in Washington, D.C., helped the AP photography staff win the top prize in breaking news photography for a collection of photographs from multiple U.S. cities that cohesively captures the country’s response to the police killing of George Floyd.

One of Vucci’s photos from June 4, 2020, shows demonstrators protesting near the White House in Washington, D.C. Another compelling image shows demonstrators vandalizing a car as they protest the death of Floyd, who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers.

The Olney, Md., native joined AP as a photographer in 2003.

Vucci is one of 11 RIT graduates who have won a combined 15 Pulitzer Prizes.

Other RIT Pulitzer winners

Here is more on the other RIT graduates who have won Pulitzer Prizes:

William Snyder ’81, winner of Pulitzer Prizes in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 2006 while working for The Dallas Morning News. Snyder was honored in 1989 in the Explanatory Journalism category. Snyder was part of a three-person team that reported how the National Transportation Safety Board conducts air-crash investigations following a crash in 1986. In 1991, Snyder won a Pulitzer in the Feature Photography category for his images of ill and orphaned children living in deplorable conditions in Romania. Snyder and Ken Geiger ’11 won in the Spot News category in 1993 for their images of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Under Snyder’s leadership as director of photography at The Dallas Morning News, the staff earned a Pulitzer in 2006 in the Breaking News Photography category for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Chloe Coleman ‘13, an award-winning photo editor with The Washington Post since 2014, helped the newspaper staff win the top prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2020 for its series that used temperature data from across the globe to examine places where warming has already exceeded the two degrees Celsius threshold—the global community’s accepted limitation of temperature growth to avoid significant and potentially catastrophic changes to the planet.

David Wallace ’01, a photographer with The Arizona Republic, helped the newspaper staff and the USA TODAY NETWORK win the prize for explanatory reporting for a project on President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, which included more than a dozen stories and documentary videos, a podcast series and a digital map with video of every foot of the 2,000-mile border showing existing fencing.

Robert Bukaty ’82 and Dan Loh ’95, winners of Pulitzer Prize in 1999 while working for The Associated Press. Bukaty and Loh were part of the AP photography staff honored in the Feature Photography category for their series of images of the key players and events surrounding President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment hearings.

Paul Benoit ’76, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 in the Feature Photography category while working for Boston Herald-American. Benoit and members of the paper’s photography staff won for their coverage of the blizzard of 1978.

Stan Grossfeld ’73, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in 1984 and 1985 while working for The Boston Globe. Grossfeld won in 1984 in the Spot News category for his series of photographs revealing the effects of war on the people of Lebanon. In 1985, he earned a Pulitzer in the Feature Photography category for a portfolio of images of the famine in Ethiopia and of illegal aliens on the Mexican border. Grossfeld was also among the finalists for Pulitzers in 1984, 1994 and 1996.

Anthony Suau ’78, winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Feature Photography while at The Denver Post, for a portfolio of images depicting the tragic effects of starvation in Ethiopia and for a single photograph of a woman at her husband’s gravesite on Memorial Day.

David Carson ’94, part of the photography staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2015. The award was for the newspaper’s coverage of the events in Ferguson, Mo., following the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.