Documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski won Emmy and Peabody Awards for “The Loving Story,” about a Virginia couple’s successful challenge to a ban on interracial marriage, has died at 78.

 Via The New York Times

September 1, 2023

Grey Villet: Mildred and Richard Loving, 1965

Nancy Buirski, an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose eye was honed as a still photographer and picture editor, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

After founding the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 1998 at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and directing it for a decade, Ms. Buirski (pronounced BURR-skee) made her own first documentary, “The Loving Story,” in 2011.

The film explored the case of Mildred and Richard Loving, who faced imprisonment because their interracial marriage in 1958 was illegal in Virginia. (She was part-Black and part-Native American, and he was white.)

Their challenge to the law resulted in a landmark civil rights ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1967 that voided state anti-miscegenation laws.

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"Years earlier, as a picture editor on the international desk at The New York Times, Ms. Buirski was credited with choosing the image that won the newspaper its first Pulitzer Prize for photography, in 1994. After seeking a photograph to accompany an article on war and famine in southern Sudan, she choose one by Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, of an emaciated toddler collapsing on the way to a United Nations feeding center as a covetous vulture lurked in the background.

Ms. Buirski commended the photo to Nancy Lee, The Times’ picture editor at the time. She then proposed it, strongly, for the front page, because, she recalled telling another editor, “This is going to win the paper’s first-ever Pulitzer Prize for photography.”

The photograph ended up appearing on an inside page in the issue of March 26, 1993, but the reaction from readers, concerned about the child’s fate, was so strong that The Times published an unusual editors’ note afterward explaining that the child had continued to the feeding center after Mr. Carter chased away the vulture.

The picture won the Pulitzer in the feature photography category. (Mr. Carter died by suicide a few months later at 33.)"

Full obituary here.

View Grey Villet's photographs of Richard and Mildred Loving here.

Censorship Is a Missing Picture: Photojournalist Grant Baldwin discusses what we don't see

 Via  Charlotte Journalism Collaborate

Censorship Is a Missing Picture: Photojournalist Grant Baldwin discusses what we don't see

Grant Baldwin: 2019 Charlotte, North Carolina Pride Parade, August 18, 2019

What is censorship? How do we recognize when it is happening, and how do we address it? Please join local photojournalist Grant Baldwin to discuss his photographs, their impact, and his experience with censorship.

The Gaston County Manager ordered the removal of a photograph on display as part of an exhibit titled Into the Darkroom at the Gaston County Museum of Art and History. According to the Charlotte Observer, "LGBTQ equality advocates are demanding officials in Gaston County reverse their decision to remove a photo showing two men recently engaged, kissing, from a museum exhibit. The photograph, taken by Charlotte freelance photojournalist Grant Baldwin, shows Justin Colasacco and his husband Bren Hipp kissing after Colasacco dropped to one knee and proposed in front of the crowd at the 2019 Charlotte Pride Festival & Parade. They married Oct. 4, 2020." According to the Gaston Gazette, the Gaston County Manager claimed that the photograph was political advocacy and wanted Mr. Baldwin to replace it with something else. The photojournalist chose instead to leave the display spot on the wall empty to demonstrate that something was missing.

Grant Baldwin is an award-winning freelance photojournalist based in Charlotte NC who focuses on visual story telling. His work has appeared in multiple local and national news outlets. He recently won the North Carolina Press Association's 2020 Best Multimedia Project for Black Lives Matter Coverage. 

Please join the Charlotte Journalism Collaborate to discuss what censorship means in our community.

Grant Baldwin's photograph is featured in the current exhibit "Imagine A World Without Photojournalism", on view through September 18. Monroe Gallery hosted Nina Berman and David Butow for a discussion on July 22: Threats to Photojournalism".