Judge 2007
Gail Fisher
SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR OF PROJECTS, LA TIMES
Get up and go: "I never really aspired to be a photographer who was handed assignments."
Though she is now a veteran photojournalist who has traveled as far as Vietnam, Mongolia, Burma, and Russia to cover stories on the human condition, Senior Photo Editor of Projects for the Los Angeles Times Gail Fisher has always been a student of the world. "I grew up reading the newspaper in the morning," she recalls. "I always was compelled to delve into social issues, feeling like I could make an impact." Fisher's interest in international affairs flourished during her undergraduate years, where she studied photography, anthropology, political science, and sociology. Her cultural awareness, coupled with her passion for current events, prompted her to earn her MFA in photojournalism from Ohio University. "I've always had a curiosity about life and the world," Fisher says. "That curiosity and my love of traveling—photojournalism was a great vehicle to explore that."
More than 20 years later, Fisher continues to travel the globe to capture stories of social distress and triumph, exploring international issues and illuminating their connection and importance to the communities that are their Stateside counterparts. She transitioned from photographer to editor with the Los Angeles Times in 1992, working for the Orange County edition, then made the move to the paper's namesake city in 2002, where she heads up a department committed to hard-hitting, public service-oriented journalism.
From her first undertaking, delving into the roots of Orange County's Little Saigon community by spending a month in Vietnam, to her most recent venture, observing the lives of foster children once they are released from the system at age 18, Fisher continues to dedicate most of her outside-the-office time to long-term, investigative projects with personal significance, often financing the trips herself. Her ability to bring the larger picture into close range has earned her and her staff such prestigious awards as the Angus McDougall Excellence in Picture Editing and Best Use of Photography and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for photojournalism. Fisher was the National Press Photographers Association runner-up Picture Editor of the Year in 2006, and was also part of the L.A. Times editorial team that earned the Pulitzer Public Service award for their work in 2005.
On the A/V crossover:
On assignment in 1997, Fisher was in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar during the Nadam midsummer festival. The experience prompted a radical change in her work, as she explains: "[The Mongolians] were in their traditional dress and they had their gers set up. The campfires were going and the flutes were playing…it was dawn. It was so incredible, but I felt I couldn't capture all the dimensions with a still camera. I got inspired to pick up a video camera and to start recording audio. [After completion of the University of Oklahoma's Platypus Workshop on video], I started shooting video and collecting audio on the next long-term project, on foster care. That background has prepared me for what I do in Los Angeles: I not only edit for projects, but I am also editing for the web, encouraging people to collect audio, from natural sound to narration. There's another platform that we can reach a totally different audience on." Fisher's foster-care piece, "Unadoptable," was broadcast as a two-part series on ABC's "Nightline Up Close."
