On the Front Lines

Deanne Fitzmaurice’s photographs for the San Francisco Chronicle of a young Iraqi war victim named Saleh (below) poignantly convey the stark reality of war. The images she made of the boy’s journey from grave injuries to his family’s relocation to the United States were so moving they garnered Fitzmaurice the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

“I knew this was too important a story to be shot in a day,” she says she thought after first laying eyes on the semiconscious child who lost his right hand, an eye, and the fingers on his left hand to a bomb that killed his older brother. “I wanted to bring light to what the war had done to this innocent nine-year-old boy and his family.”

The Bay Area-based Nikon Ambassador is known for her unfiltered storytelling, capturing both unscripted moments and sensitive portraits on assignments around the globe.

ADVENTURE AND STORYTELLING

Fitzmaurice’s road to the top of the photo world started before she held a camera. After graduating high school in Massachusetts, she bought a van to drive across the country. During her trip, she acquired problem-solving skills and nurtured her adventurous spirit, which she credits to her parents. “I think that came from my father who had been a fighter pilot,” she says, adding that her mother had been a librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “She was all about storytelling. So, I think those two things, adventure and storytelling, were instilled in me from a young age.”

When she arrived on the West Coast, she fell in love with San Francisco and, determined to live there, applied to its Academy of Art University. Once she was accepted, Fitzmaurice started taking classes in art history and design. But something was missing, she says. “I was taking all these art classes, but during that process, I realized that art as a career wasn’t for me, because much of it is being in a studio by yourself,” she adds. “I had such a yearning to be out with people and where stories were happening.” She started taking photography classes and “became obsessed,” she says, devouring classes in various types of photography including architectural, food, studio portraiture, and photojournalism. “That’s the one that changed my life,” Fitzmaurice says of the latter. “I knew exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I fell deeply in love with the idea of being a photojournalist and being on the front lines of culture, news, sports, entertainment, and trying to figure out how to tell the story in as powerful a way as possible.”

While still in school, Fitzmaurice put together a portfolio and started “knocking on doors” to find a way to transition to paid work. She recalls visiting the San Francisco office of the Associated Press “with my very immature portfolio.” An editor glanced at it and suggested she return in a year or so. As she was leaving, Fitzmaurice says, “this old-school editor said, ‘Hey, kid.’ I turned around and he threw me a couple of rolls of film and said, ‘Why don’t you see what you can do with these? If you get something good. Come on back in.’”

The next day, she descended on Golden Gate Park in search of that something good. She happened upon a man sunbathing in a lawn chair with a book. Nearby was a gaggle of Canadian geese. “I’m thinking, Oh, I wonder if there might be some interesting juxtaposition here. I remained patient, kept watching, and the next thing I knew, a Canadian goose came and looked over the man’s shoulder. Then another came and looked over his other shoulder, as if they were both reading the book as well.” Satisfied she had a humorous photo, she was even more pleased when the AP editor agreed and published it. She had made her first photojournalistic sale.

The young photographer continued to make the rounds to local newspapers and magazines. She photographed entertainment for City Arts and took San Francisco-based assignments for the Peninsula Times Tribune in Palo Alto, California. Within a year after her graduation from the Academy of Art, she had a portfolio of published work, including many images of well-known authors, actors, and musicians.

In 1988, Fitzmaurice joined the San Francisco Chronicle as a staff photographer, beginning a two-decade career with the newspaper, capturing a wide range of images, from the most severe earthquake to hit the city in nearly a century to landmark Supreme Court rulings to wars and sporting events. Her husband, Kurt Rogers, also was a photographer there, and the two were part of a group of photographers and designers who founded the well-known camera bag company Think Tank Photo in the early 2000s.

A self-proclaimed “news junkie,” Fitzmaurice says she is always paying attention. She particularly gravitates toward social issues, a prevailing theme in her work. One of her most notable projects is the result of that curiosity. In 2020, she saw a photo of a woman, Brianna Noble, at an Oakland, California, protest against the murder of George Floyd. What struck her was Noble was riding her horse in the street. Fitzmaurice learned Noble had created an organization that helps children—primarily children of color—develop confidence through horseback riding, and she also rescued horses set for slaughter. Fitzmaurice contacted Noble and said she wanted to tell her story. Noble agreed. 

After building a solid photo essay on Noble, Fitzmaurice pitched the story to several publications. When it did not get picked up, she submitted the series to the Missouri School of Journalism’s Pictures of the Year contest. She won, and an editor from Cosmopolitan magazine contacted her to use the photos for a feature story about Noble, which was published in 2022.  

Fitzmaurice focuses mostly on people in her photo essays. One example of her philosophy is in the images from the Maui wildfire she covered for NPR in 2023. “They sent me there as soon as the fire broke out. I stayed for a week, and then, six months later, they sent me back,” Fitzmaurice recalls. “It was really about humanizing this disaster, how it was affecting the people and the community, and to take photographs with respect and understanding.”

Today, Fitzmaurice is a freelance photojournalist who has worked for media brands including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, NPR, and The New York Times. She has told stories through images for nonprofits including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is a frequent lecturer at Stanford University, and has created projects for iconic brands like Amazon, Apple, Nike, and Google. Her book project for the Little Museum of Dublin is to be published in the Irish capital next year.

Part of the success of being a newspaper photographer is the visual and technical flexibility to photograph whatever assignment or spot news incidents come along, she says. “I learned to be prepared. I learned to really know my camera equipment before going out on a shoot. I learned to anticipate where a moment might happen and be ready for anything that might unfold.” 

Mark Edward Harris is an award-winning photographer and writer based in Los Angeles.