Masked ICE agents and federal officers detain migrants after immigration court hearings in New York. In the context of the mass deportation campaign launched by the Trump administration, the photographer documented families in a state of trauma between June and December 2025, with particular attention to minors caught in the crossfire between deportation policies and the right to protection.
Copyright: © Carol Guzy
There are images that inform. And there are images that are uncomfortable to be looked at but are often the most necessary because they do not allow us to look away.
Carol Guzy’s documentation of ICE detentions inside New York’s Jacob Javits Federal Building stands as a powerful example of deeply committed photojournalism. Shot over six months between June and December 2025, this body of work embodies what the Festival of Ethical Photography believes photography must do at its highest level: hold power accountable while never losing sight of the human beings in the frame.
What struck the jury the most was Guzy’s extraordinary ability to navigate the full emotional register of a crisis — from the raw, visceral anguish of a mother screaming as her family is torn apart, to the quieter, almost unbearable tenderness of a security guard shedding tears in front of a mother and child lost in despair. It is precisely in this oscillation between the explosive and the intimate that great photojournalism lives.
The imagery is unflinching. Masked officers in balaclavas, migrants standing in line beneath a portrait of Trump, whose background includes the United States of America Constitution—these contrasts are not accidental. Guzy understands the grammar of the decisive moment, but she also understands something deeper: sometimes it is the quiet frame, not the dramatic one, that cuts furthest into the collective conscience.
In a media landscape increasingly saturated with images, this work reminds us of the power of photography — why a single frame of children desperately clutching their father’s shirt can say more about justice, dignity, and humanity than any political speech.
The jury is honored to recognize this work. And we are grateful to Carol Guzy, one of the most decorated photojournalists of her generation, for having the courage to stand in that courthouse, day after day, and bear witness.
Carol Guzy was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and lived there until 1978 when she completed studies at Northampton County Area Community College, graduating with an Associate’s degree in Registered Nursing. A change of heart led her to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in FL to study photography, where she graduated in 1980 with an Associate in Applied Science degree in Photography.
She interned at The Miami Herald and, upon graduation, was hired as a staff photographer. She spent eight years at the newspaper and in 1988, became a staff photographer at The Washington Post through 2014. She is currently a freelance and contract photographer with ZUMA Press.
She was honored twice with the Pulitzer for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and the devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia. She received a third Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo, and she is the first journalist to receive a fourth Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Haitian earthquake in 2010. She has been named Photographer of the Year for the National Press Photographers Association three times and nine times for the White House News Photographers Association and has earned many other prestigious awards in her chosen profession of photojournalism. She specializes in long-form documentary human interest projects and news stories, both domestic and international.
