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Photojournalist David Swanson was shot within the arm whereas he was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq in 2004. Later, he received the Pulitzer Prize for protection of college violence in Philadelphia.
Yes, Swanson has loads of tales about his 40-year profession. He’s sharing them through a podcast collection referred to as “Just the Photographer: Stories the Photos Can’t Tell.” The first episode dropped on August 1.
The podcast options the blunt-spoken photographer describing battle, threat, empathy, and documenting powerful tales, beginning with civil struggle in Bosnia.

Why Did Swanson Record These Podcasts?
Swanson, an unbiased photographer based mostly in Los Angeles, cites a number of motivating components:
- To let younger photographers know what they’re moving into
- To clarify photographers’ very important function in witnessing and documenting human occasions (not “enemies of the state”)
- Turning 60
- Respect
Swanson says the podcast’s title “Just the Photographer” is taken from the query typically posed to information photographers who arrive at assignments and are requested, “are you the writer, or just the photographer?”
Credentials
In 2004, Swanson received a World Press Photo Golden Eye Award for his images from Ramadi, Iraq. He was embedded with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, Echo Company, which sustained heavy casualties, together with 10 deaths in at some point. Swanson was shot within the arm.

The earlier yr, he was embedded with the tenth Mountain Division in Afghanistan. For greater than three a long time, Swanson was a photojournalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer; he moved to Los Angeles in 2019.
Well-traveled Swanson lined high tales for The Inquirer: trapped miners in Pennsylvania, the earthquake in Haiti (2010), and Hurricane Katrina (2005). He lined the Jerry Sandusky trial and was hit within the head with a brick when pupil protests erupted after Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno was fired in 2011.
In 2012, a group at The Inquirer — together with Swanson — received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for protection of pervasive violence within the metropolis’s faculties.
His early curiosity in information pictures started in highschool when he bought footage of a hearth to the York Dispatch in Pennsylvania. Swanson earned a photojournalism diploma from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication in 1988.
Fire Photography
Swanson’s present photos from California seem worldwide. A specialty is hearth pictures, as reported by PetaPixel on January 8, 2025 and September 23, 2024.

His extensively printed images of the Gifford Fire in southern California appeared August 5 in The New York Times and elsewhere.
Top information retailers assign Swanson to {photograph} wildfires, celebrities on the purple carpet, unrest prompted by deportation, and extra.

His images of fireside, battle, and the glitz of Hollywood are maybe price a thousand phrases. But Swanson says they don’t inform the entire story, so he’s including his voice to elucidate his visible photos through podcasts that share “Who, What, Where, How — And Most Importantly, WHY.”
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