Pulitzer-Prize Profitable Photographer Is Capturing Portraits Throughout America for US Semiquincentennial

The Carnegie Corporation named 26 Andrew Carnegie Fellows in 2025, offering scholarships as much as $200,000. One of those 26 Fellows is a photographer/cinematographer: Pulitzer Prize winner Steven G. Smith, a professor on the University of Connecticut.

What will this photographer do with Carnegie grant cash? What are the tip makes use of of his work?

We caught up with well-traveled Professor Smith (@stevengsmith_pictures) in rural Colorado to be taught extra. Smith is documenting America for its 250th birthday subsequent yr (1776-2026).

The title of Smith’s expansive venture is These United States: A Portrait of America within the twenty first Century.

“Through visual storytelling,” says Smith, “my goal is to cut through some of the noise, reduce polarization, promote understanding, and challenge stereotypes.”

Starting in 2023, Smith has taken hundreds of photographs in 20 states. The Carnegie grant permits him to work full-time on his portrait-of-America venture. Smith plans to wrap up documentary analysis by July 4, 2026.

The venture’s objectives are:

• A tabletop pictures guide
• A touring gallery exhibition
• A digital multimedia expertise integrating nonetheless pictures, brief movies, mapping, and narrative textual content

Who Is Steven G. Smith?

After finishing the grasp’s program at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication in 1994, Smith labored as a photojournalist. He was a part of the workforce on the Rocky Mountain News that received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for protection of Colorado’s wildfires.

Smith joined the faculty on the University of Connecticut in 2013 and has created a prolific physique of labor. His award-winning movie The Long Goodbye, a few daughter caring for her father with dementia, has been screened at greater than two dozen festivals, together with the Cannes World Film Festival in 2023.

Smith’s pictures and cinematography work have appeared at ESPN, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian. He is the creator of Under the Dark Sky: Life within the Thames River Basin, a 2018 picture essay guide.

What Motivates Smith to Document America?

Smith’s aim is to “remind us of what we share, not just what separates us.”

“I see resilience, pride in place, cultural depth, and a sincere desire for connection,” says the professor. “I am consistently taken back by the diversity of this vast nation and the graciousness of the people I meet.”

Inspirations and function fashions embody:

Andrew Carnegie Fellows

The Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program is likely one of the most revered awards within the humanities and social sciences, permitting recipients to focus for one or two years on crucial points confronting society.

The 2025 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows is the second yr of this system’s effort to construct a physique of analysis on political polarization. Carnegie will commit as much as $18 million to this effort over three years.

Academics named as 2025 Carnegie Fellows embody Political Science Professor Adam J. Berinsky of MIT, History Professor Kathryn Cramer Brownell of Purdue University, Matt Grossmann of Michigan State University, and Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University.

Fellows are chosen primarily based on the originality of their analysis, its potential influence, and students’ plans for speaking findings to a broad viewers.

Professor Smith, taking hundreds extra photographs of America, desires to keep away from oversimplification.

“American identify,” he says, “is not defined by a single narrative. It is formed through many stories living side by side.”

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Acknowledgement relating to Andrew Carnegie Fellow Steven G. Smith: This publication was made attainable partly by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the duty of the creator.

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About the creator: Ken Klein lives in Silver Spring, Maryland; he’s retired after a profession in politics, lobbying, and media together with The Associated Press and Gannett in Florida. Klein is an alumnus of Ohio University and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Scripps College of Communication. Professionally, he has labored for Fort Myers News-Press (Gannett), The Associated Press (Tallahassee), Senator Bob Graham, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA).