David Leeson (October 18, 1957 – April 16, 2022) was a staff photographer for ''

The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the '' Galvest ...

''. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2004, together with

Cheryl Diaz Meyer Cheryl Diaz Meyer is an independent photojournalist based in Washington, D.C., who won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography with David Leeson in 2004. Biography and career Cheryl Diaz Meyer was born on February 25, 1968, in Quezo ...

, for coverage of the

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. He also received the RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Award, the

National Headliner Award National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

, and a regional Emmy Award in 2004 for his work as executive producer and photographer for the

WFAA-TV WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29) ...

documentary "War Stories."ACU press releas
"Pulitzer Prize-winning alumnus David Leeson wins Murrow, Headliner awards,"
July 19, 2004. Retrieved August 6, 2007.David Leeson
profile at LinkedIn. Retrieved August 10, 2007. Before his 2004 win, Leeson had been a finalist for the Pulitzer three times — twice individually and once as member of a team — in feature photography (1986), explanatory journalism (1990, as part of the newspaper staff), and spot news photography (1995).Jay DeFoore
"Leeson, Diaz Meyer Of DMN And LAT's Cole Win Photo Pulitzers,"
''Photo District News'' Online, April 5, 2004. Retrieved August 6, 2007.

Photojournalism career

Leeson was a 1978 graduate of Abilene Christian University, where he received a degree in

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...

and mass communication.Text of H.R. No. 1520
resolution in the Texas House of Representatives honoring Leeson, adopted May 16, 2005. Retrieved August 10, 2007. While still in college, he was on the staff of the ''

Abilene Reporter-News ''Abilene Reporter-News'' is a daily newspaper based in Abilene, Texas, United States. The newspaper started publishing as the weekly ''Abilene Reporter'', helmed by Charles Edwin Gilbert on June 17, 1881, just three months after Abilene was f ...

'', where he began in 1977 and stayed until 1982. He left Abilene for

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

, where he was on the staff of ''

The Times-Picayune ''The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate'' is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of ''The Times-Picayune'' (itself a result of ...

'' from 1982 to 1984.David Leeson biography
at ''The Dallas Morning News'' official site. Retrieved August 7, 2007. Since joining the staff of ''The Dallas Morning News'' in 1984, Leeson has covered local and regional news and issues, such as homelessness and natural disasters; national stories on death row inmates across the United States; international conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Sudan, Angola, Kuwait and Iraq in the first and second

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

s in Turkey; and

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

in South Africa. His 1985 series on homelessness earned him a

Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism is a journalism award named after Robert F. Kennedy and awarded by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The annual awards are issued in several categories and were est ...

, an honor he received again in 1994 for his coverage of the

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

in Angola.Breaking News Photography: Biography
from pulitzer.org. Retrieved August 10, 2007. The year 1985 also saw his first Pulitzer nomination, for coverage of apartheid in South Africa; he returned twice to that nation, the last time in 1994, when he recorded the historic event of South Africa's first non-racial presidential elections. While photographing protesters during the buildup to the ousting of

Manuel Noriega Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (; February 11, 1934 – May 29, 2017) was a Panamanian dictator, politician and military officer who was the ''de facto'' ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989. An authoritarian ruler who amassed a personal f ...

in 1988, Leeson was wounded when a shotgun pellet entered his cheek, chipping his tooth and sending him to a

Panama City Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...

emergency room.Associated Press. "Riot at Panama hospital: Workers demand paychecks from Noriega Regime," ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', March 16, 1988, page A1. Leeson was a finalist for the Pulitzer a second time, in 1994, for a photograph of a family fleeing

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

waters in southeast Texas,Rick Hampson, Associated Press. "Journalism Pulitzer Prizes announced: Coverage of Rwanda, natural disaster, and life in the inner city earned top honors," ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', April 19, 1995, page A2. a picture that also won him a Texas Headliner Award."Veteran Chronicle editor, 3 staffers win Headliners awards," ''Houston Chronicle'', October 1, 1995, page 40. In 2008, Leeson decided to accept a buy-out offer and leave ''The Dallas Morning News'', as part of an A. H. Belo Corporation cost-cutting measure involving buyouts of more than 400 journalists.David Walker
"Leeson to leave ''Dallas Morning News'',"
''Photo District News'', September 8, 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-08. He planned to continue in freelance photojournalism and documentary film work.

Unattributed photos

While Leeson's work is well known within the journalism community, he has endured a number of cases of credit for his

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

photos being given to others, following his loaning of a CD of 200 full-resolution photos to the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

3rd Infantry Division for one-time use in a yearbook for the soldiers. He has written about the incident in a public

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

, stating that although he included

copyright symbol The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings. 17 U.S.C. The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Conv ...

s with each photo, placed a

README In software development, a README file contains information about the other files in a directory or archive of computer software. A form of documentation, it is usually a simple plain text file called README, Read Me, READ.ME, README.TXT, R ...

file on the CD explaining that the images were for one-time use, and explained to the public affairs officer that the images should be guarded closely to prevent plagiarism, someone made several copies and distributed them. In many cases, the soldiers appear to have been unaware that Leeson never intended for copies to be made of the CD, as more than one has written to him asking for a replacement copy after losing their disc.David Leeson. "Behind the scenes of image theft", ''The Creative Alchemist'', December 5, 2005. Retrieved August 7, 2007. Subsequently, numerous incidents have occurred in which soldiers, photographers, or others have passed off Leeson's work as their own, either on photography sites, blogs, or print periodicals.

Personal data

Leeson was born October 18, 1957, in Abilene, Texas, and died there April 16, 2022. He was most recently married to former ''Dallas Morning News'' photographer Kim Ritzenthaler (on April 17, 2000), with whom he had two children.Ancestry.com. ''Texas Marriage Collection, 1814-1909 and 1966-2002'' atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. He also had three children from a previous marriage, which ended in 1998.Ancestry.com. ''Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997'' atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas. Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997. Texas: Texas Department of State Health Services. Microfiche.Ancestry.com. ''Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002'' atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002. Texas, USA: Texas Department of State Health Services.

Notes

External links

Leeson's and Diaz Meyer's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo series
at Pulitzer.org *National Press Photographers Association
"David Leeson takes buy-out at ''Dallas Morning News'',"
September 4, 2008. Retrieved May 31, 2013. {{DEFAULTSORT:Leeson, David 1957 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers People from Abilene, Texas American photojournalists Abilene Christian University alumni American members of the Churches of Christ Pulitzer Prize for Photography winners The Dallas Morning News people Journalists from Texas Regional Emmy Award winners