Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Michel du Cille died Thursday while on assignment in Liberia for The Washington Post. The newspaper says du Cille collapsed while walking on foot from a village in Liberia's Bong County. He was taken to a hospital but died of an apparent heart attack.
Du Cille, 58, was renowned for capturing intimate scenes of sorrow and triumph. The Washington Post has an obituary of the Jamaican-born photojournalist.
We'll remember him here with four photographs he took in Liberia, covering the Ebola outbreak. Back in October, du Cille wrote for the Post that this assignment was tough because throughout his career, he had always aimed for compassion and dignity.
"Respect is often the last and only thing that the world can offer a deceased or dying person," he wrote. "Yet the camera itself seems to be a betrayal of the dignity I so hope to offer. Sometimes, the harshness of a gruesome scene simply cannot be sanitized. How does one give dignity to the image of a woman who has died and is lying on the ground, unattended, uncovered and alone as people walk by or gaze from a distance? But I believe that the world must see the horrible and dehumanizing effects of Ebola. The story must be told; so one moves around with tender care, gingerly, without extreme intrusion."
(An aside: Remember, du Cille was uninvited to speak at Syracuse University during the Ebola scare in the U.S.)
Here is some of his work:
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