OU remembers alum Michel du Cille who died while on assignment in Liberia
An Ohio University alumnus who won the Pulitzer prize three times for his photography died while on assignment for The Washington Post last Thursday.
Michel du Cille, who received a masters degree from OU in 1994, was 58 when he died of a heart attack while documenting the lives and struggles of Ebola patients and their families in Liberia.
“He was very intense person that wanted to do the best he could at photojournalism and journalism in general, and he expected nothing but the same from other people,” said Gary Kirksey, graduate director of OU’s School of Visual Communication. “It was very sudden and a great loss.”
Kirksey was an OU faculty member when du Cille was a student, and he found out about the news of his death through a text message he received from a colleague.
“I was lucky enough to meet him my first month I was here at OU,” Kirksey said. “Michel was a very spirited soul.”
du Cille was born in Kingston, Jamaica. His family moved to Georgia when he was in his teens, his father, previously a minister, switched career paths and became a journalist. When du Cille was in high school, he started his photography career at The Gainesville Times before going to Indiana University for his undergraduate studies.
“Michel was a thoughtful, but driven journalist with a camera,” Terry Eiler, former director of OU’s School of Visual Communication, said in an email. “Michel was the type of leader that would have a serious talk with you and you would still walk away a friend."
In 1981, du Cille joined The Miami Herald’s photography staff and went to The Washington Post in 1988 and worked as a photo editor.
du Cille’s first Pulitzer prize was shared with Carol Guzy of the Miami Herald for coverage of the eruption of Colombia’s Nevado Del Ruiz volcano in 1985.
His second Pulitzer was also won during his time at the Herald in 1988 for his photo essay on people addicted to crack cocaine in a Miami housing project.
du Cille’s work depicted non-stereotypical images of people addicted to the drug. After the story ran, “The housing government went in … they asked where this place actually was and they said they had closed it off, renovated it, and moved people back in,” Kirksey said.
du Cille won his third Pulitzer in 2008 while working for the Washington Post. The prize, which he shared with Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull, was awarded for an investigative public service series on the treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Danielle Allen, a member of the Pulitzer Board, voted in favor of his award-winning work in 2008.
“His photos were an intrinsic part of the power of that story,” Allen said. “He did such a good job of taking viewers into the lives of returning veterans”
du Cille possessed the gift of being to show people the truth of difficulty and vulnerability while also preserving the dignity and humanity of the subjects, Allen said.
“His photos were powerful in that package both because they were truth telling and they were capturing people in great vulnerability,” he said.
In February 2013, Du Cille was at OU for the Schuneman Symposium on Photojournalism and New Media. Eiler remembers the patience and perspectives du Cille would show with students when he visited campus. The last time Kirksey talked to him was “probably about three months ago”.
“He was someone that you could count on to support you and his ability to get both sides of the story,” Kirksey said. “That’s part of the reason why he was back in Liberia. He wanted to show both sides of the medical situation there … he was quite amazing, his approach to everything."
