![\"Spencer](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Spencer-Platt-400x400-1.jpg\")
\u201cI thought [Trump] would speak, there would be screaming and yelling, then things would settle down and I\u2019d be on the 6:07 back to New York,\u201d he recalls. Even with his \u201cantenna up,\u201d Platt purchased a train ticket to return home to Brooklyn that night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ticket never got used. By day\u2019s end, he had borne witness to an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob intent on halting the final step in the electoral process and forcefully reinstalling Trump as president. In the mayhem outside the building, as rioters stormed metal barricades and attacked Capitol police officers, Platt trained his camera on a man in a red hoodie and black ball cap clutching an American flag while the crowd swirled around him. The man\u2019s face was covered in a gas mask, but his eyes, visible behind the glass, turned toward Platt, acknowledging his camera just as the photo was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Platt\u2019s picture of the rioter earned him a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, an honor shared with four Getty colleagues whose collection of gripping photos chronicles the assault on the Capitol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he looks at the photo, Platt wonders what became of the man in the gas mask or what his motivations were for storming the Capitol, but, as he notes, \u201cWe had no time to chat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platt\u2019s road to the Pulitzer has Clark origins. The photography student from Darien, Connecticut, found classroom work far less alluring than the streets of Worcester, which he roamed at every opportunity, camera in hand. His mentor, Professor Stephen DiRado, \u201cpushed me out the door to meet people, to explore the city, which is what I did. And I discovered that street photography was my forte. This is what I loved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platt worked as a freelancer for the Worcester Telegram<\/em> the summer after he graduated from Clark, before landing his first full-time photography job at a small newspaper in Milford, Massachusetts. A few years later, while working at a paper in New York state, he used some vacation time to travel to Albania when it was experiencing violent political protests. His series of photographs was published in the newspaper, and one of them was republished by LIFE<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlbania was in severe strife at the time \u2014 you could hear the guns. I knew then that this is what I\u2019m cut out for,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI\u2019m not an adrenaline junkie, but I do like some risk and adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPhotojournalism offers me an unpredictable life. The news sometimes can wear me down, but there\u2019s no way I can just read about it. I have a mental and physical need to witness it. That\u2019s what leads me into those places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s in those places where Platt documents conflict in its rawest and most perilous form. The fallout from September 11 set the course of his career for the next five years, much of that time spent photographing the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He remembers being lined up with other journalists on the Kuwait-Iraq border, awaiting the official declaration of war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe all had rental trucks, ready to go. When the gun went off, we started them up and sped off into the desert. It was like the start of some mad endurance car race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The settings were chaotic; the conditions lethal; the work exhilarating. Platt can speak with authority about what it\u2019s like to navigate a road cratered by explosions, or the whistling sound an approaching shell makes as you hurl yourself to the ground. He shot photos, and was shot at with rifles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thrived on it,\u201d he says of his time in high-conflict areas, \u201cbut I was also pragmatic. When you\u2019re in it, ultimately, your main goal is to make it out of there. I\u2019ve lost a number of colleagues covering war, and each loss brings home that this is serious and can happen in a very small conflict, or the biggest conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some threats are less explicit. While covering the Arab Spring rebellions a decade ago, Pratt roamed Cairo while it was under military lockdown. \u201cThere was a surreal quality to it \u2014 like walking through Manhattan on a Tuesday afternoon and nobody is there,\u201d he recalls. \u201cYou could feel the soldiers eyeing you, debating what to do with you. In hindsight, probably shouldn\u2019t have been out on the streets at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platt won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year for his image of a group of Lebanese men and women cruising in a red convertible past the wreckage of a recent bombing. Years ago, he was in Ukraine chronicling the Russian invasion of the Donbas region when he was detained at a roadblock by Chechen soldiers who believed he was a spy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere were some heated moments,\u201d he says. \u201cWith Russian soldiers, things can escalate pretty quickly if you don\u2019t have someone on the scene who is level-headed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platt no longer seeks out assignments in war zones. He acknowledges that as the married father of a young daughter, family considerations play into his decisions about the length of time he spends away from home and the risks he\u2019ll assume. \u201cI\u2019d be lying if I said having a child doesn\u2019t affect the calculations you make,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the changing calculus of his career, Platt would gladly welcome the opportunity to bring his camera to places where political and economic instabilities exert themselves on vulnerable populations \u2014 if those opportunities are ever offered. He\u2019s troubled by media organizations\u2019 unwillingness to extend their storytelling resources to parts of the world where long-standing problems go unrecognized because they don\u2019t align with consumers\u2019 short-term interests and flickering attention spans. Catastrophe and scandal rule the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI try not to be cynical about the news business, but the story that dominates today is easily eclipsed by novelty and titillation,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re too easily distracted and forget what\u2019s happening elsewhere, especially in places like Central Africa that don\u2019t always get a lot of attention. If I can find an editor to support coverage in those locations, I will always accept that work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platt has covered his share of American tragedies, each of them requiring that he don a sort of emotional armor allowing him to capture images at the scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When he arrived in Newtown, Connecticut, the day of the Sandy Hook shootings, he had to struggle against his own sadness and disbelief \u2014 and the surreality of schoolchildren being murdered in classrooms just 30 miles from where he grew up \u2014 to emerge with photos that captured both the devastation and resilience of the townspeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He faced similar challenges at the scenes of the Pulse nightclub massacre and the 2022 supermarket shooting in Buffalo that left 10 people dead. Always, he says, the photographer needs to find a way to compartmentalize the dispiriting emotions to get at the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have to make yourself a little bit numb to what has happened, or you wouldn\u2019t be able to function,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the end, we have a responsibility to cover these stories \u2014 we have to get the news out. There are some people who would prefer we don\u2019t do that and just go away. But the response is, \u2018No. We\u2019re not going to forget what happened here.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through his lens, Platt not only chronicles the world\u2019s conflicts, but celebrates its joys. He\u2019s photographed the Tour de France and bread makers in Tripoli; communities of people at their most buoyant and individuals in quiet reflection. The subjects of these pictures are a persistent reminder of the good things among us that deserve a Spencer Platt photograph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, accessing those things requires a well-timed road trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once he\u2019d finished his grim assignment in Buffalo, Platt climbed onto his Moto Guzzi motorcycle and left for an appointment in Syracuse. To decompress from what he\u2019d just experienced, he chose a route that took him along backroads and through small towns. Within 20 minutes, he was passing by Little League games in progress and waving back to the people who waved to him from outside their homes. It was the tonic he needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere I was, just an hour before, thinking that this country is hopeless,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe I\u2019m romanticizing, but it\u2019s important to recognize the great things happening every minute of every day, and remember there are a lot of good people in this world. I always try to remind myself of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Story from Clark magazine, winter\/spring 2023<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" His images of war, 9\/11, and the Capitol insurrection have earned Clark alum a reputation for fearlessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25017,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"var(--clarku-color-darker-blue)","story_headerImg":-1,"section_label":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[225],"displayed_author":[235],"featured":[],"topic":[232],"class_list":["post-25016","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-humanities","displayed_author-jim-keogh","topic-alumni"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Platt-Capitol-Jan6-1024x683.jpg\")
![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Platt-Sept11.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Platt-DCR-Getty-1024x624.jpg\")
![\"Affluent](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Platt-Lebanon-photo-1024x680.jpg\")
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