Photojournalist Barbara Davidson is pictured with a member of the Texas National Guard before taking off in a Black Hawk helicopter to photograph Hurricane Harvey’s devastation in and around Houston, Texas, in September 2017. | Courtesy of Barbara Davidson
The New York Times assigned Barbara Davidson to photograph the ongoing drama of Hurricane Harvey. | Photo credit: Barbara Davidson
She certainly benefitted from her time at the university, which included being a photographer and photo editor for the student newspaper The Link. As Davidson told Concordia University Magazine in 2006, she was also grateful for her professors’ conceptual approach to photography. “It gave me a very open mind visually, instead of just looking at the clichéd news angle.”
After graduating from Concordia, she landed a photography job at the Kitchener Waterloo Record. From there she eventually moved to the U.S., gaining invaluable experience covering the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s along the way.
A few years later, Davidson was hired by the Dallas Morning News, and she was at that paper when she was sent to New Orleans to capture Katrina’s effects. She was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for its work in New Orleans, and she was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International (POYi).
She left the Dallas Morning News for the L.A. Times in 2007. Over the past decade and a half Davidson has photographed a number of war zones, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gaza, as well as several international natural-disaster areas.
In 2011 Davidson earned a second POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year honour and Pulitzer Prize, this time for her solo work for “Caught in the Crossfire,” a series of images charting the plight of those affected by gang violence in Los Angeles.
She was also a member of the L.A. Times team that won the 2016 Pulitzer for Breaking News Reporting, for its coverage of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack.
After a decade at the L.A. Times, Davidson decided to head off on her own a few months ago. “It was a great 10 years, but there were several reasons I left,” she says. “In a nutshell, I wanted to have the opportunity to do as many different things as possible, and not be tied to one brand.”
Davidson, who remains based in California, now looks forward to projects as diverse as fine arts photography, assignments for National Geographic Magazine and commercial work. She recently finished a shoot for Volvo. “I’m inspired by the new creative commercial photography,” she says.
The funds she earns from commercial activity will allow her to take on other projects close to her heart, such as humanitarian work.
Keynote lecture
At the Concordia Homecoming Keynote Lecture, called Leap of faith: a photojournalist’s journey, Davidson will reveal the stories behind many of her best photos. “The presentation will be more personal than I usually make it. I’ll be where it all began for me, in my hometown in Montreal,” she says.
“I’ll describe what led to the types of coverage I do, and why it’s important to me. I’ll also talk about my upbringing and how it shaped what I am today.”