NASHVILLE, TN – The largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs ever shown in the U.S.in the Upper-Level galleries of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.  The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment will remain on exhibition through August 20, 2006.

The exhibition features more than 130 images drawn from each year’s winning entries from 1942 (the first year the Pulitzer Prize for Photography was awarded) through 2006.  The stunning show features many of the most memorable and instantly recognizable images in recent decades.  Included in the collection: images of Kosovo refugees (2000 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography); a scene captured at Columbine High School (2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news); Robert H. Jackson’s photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald (1964 Pulitzer Prize) and Joe Rosenthal’s World War II photograph of the raising of the American flag over Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima (1945 Pulitzer Prize).

In the catalog accompanying the exhibition, Seymour Topping, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes from 1993 to 2002, calls works in Capture the Moment “indelible images that in coming centuries will inevitably be used as flashbacks to illustrate the triumphs and tragedies of our era”. 

“These photographs have captured so many incredibly important moments in our history,” said Frist Center Associate Curator Nancy Cason.  “What we see are split-second image stories that speak volumes.  In this day and age, when we are so accustomed to absorbing and digesting moving images, these ‘captured moments’ focus our attention with razor-sharp clarity and invite us into our own history and the culture of the world around us”.