Michael S. Williamson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist renowned for his powerful documentary work on poverty and social justice, has retired from The Washington Post after more than three decades of distinguished service. The acclaimed photographer, who described his profession as "the best job in the world," officially ended his career on July 31, announcing his retirement on social media.
Born in 1957, Williamson's early life was marked by hardship. Orphaned at a young age, he grew up in a series of foster homes, an experience that would profoundly shape his artistic vision and storytelling ability. Throughout his career, he has been celebrated for creating highly personal and impactful photographic work that explores themes of poverty, displacement, and the human condition.
Williamson's first Pulitzer Prize came in 1990 while working at the Sacramento Bee, where he collaborated with writer Dale Maharidge on the groundbreaking book "And Their Children After Them." This work served as a follow-up to the famous 1941 book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, which documented the lives of impoverished sharecroppers during the Great Depression.
For their project, Williamson and Maharidge tracked down the descendants of the families originally photographed by Evans more than 40 years earlier. Their 1989 book examined the generational impact of extreme poverty and the ongoing challenges faced by successive generations attempting to climb the socioeconomic ladder. The book's enduring relevance was recognized with the publication of a 30th anniversary edition in 2019.
The successful partnership between Williamson and Maharidge extended beyond their Pulitzer-winning work. The duo also collaborated on other acclaimed books, including "Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass" and "Homeland," both of which received critical recognition for their exploration of social and economic issues affecting American society.
In 1993, just three years after his first Pulitzer victory, Williamson joined The Washington Post as a staff photographer, beginning what would become a career spanning over three decades at one of America's most prestigious newspapers. During his tenure at the Post, he would achieve his second Pulitzer Prize and earn recognition as one of the nation's most respected photojournalists.
Williamson's second Pulitzer Prize came in 2000, when he shared the Feature Photography award with colleagues Carol Guzy and Lucian Perkins. The trio was honored for their intimate and poignant photographs documenting the tragic plight of refugees during the Kosovo War in the late 1990s. Their images captured the human cost of the brutal conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) and the Kosovo Liberation Army, a war that resulted in thousands of deaths and displaced millions of people.
In 2014, Williamson's exceptional work earned him another Pulitzer Prize nomination, this time as a finalist for his compelling photographic series on food stamp recipients. While Williamson was recognized as a finalist in the photography category, his collaborator, writer Eli Saslow, won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for the same project, highlighting the power of their combined storytelling approach.
Throughout his career, Williamson has been praised not only for his technical skills but also for his remarkable artistic vision. Jim Colton, a long-time Director of Photography and editor, described Williamson in 2015 as "a national treasure in the field of photojournalism," praising his "remarkable artistic eye, brilliant use of color, and hard-earned ability to see stories that many others cannot."
Williamson's unique perspective and storytelling ability can be traced back to his challenging childhood experiences. In a 2015 interview with Colton, he reflected on how being moved between different foster homes actually developed his narrative skills. "I was really good at writing stories because I'd seen a lot of different states," Williamson recalled. "I'd seen a tobacco farm in Tennessee; the beaches of Virginia; California; Oregon; stayed with my grandfather in Springfield, Illinois, in a really cool house that was half underground. I lived in a housing project that was heavily minority."
This early exposure to diverse communities and living conditions gave Williamson a unique understanding of American society's complexity. "To me it wasn't a big deal to be completely surrounded by diversity and non-English speakers and extremely poor people," he explained. "So I would write these stories and the teacher would say, 'you know, you're not a very good speller, (proof that I had hope as a photographer) but you got a way of turning a phrase there kid.'"
Williamson's journalism career began during his high school years when he started writing for a local newspaper. Despite being an All-American athlete in cross country and track, he found himself drawn to journalism. "It just scratched so many itches," the award-winning photographer later told Colton.
His transition from writing to photography happened somewhat by accident while working part-time at the Sacramento Bee in the 1970s. The newspaper had only one photographer at the time, so they asked Williamson to take pictures for his own stories. "So I went and bought a $50 Yashica rangefinder with a fixed 38mm lens and I didn't really know how to work it," he remembered. "So after the camera store loaded the film for me, I looked at the little instruction sheet that came with it that said, 'Sunny day a 500th at f/8 shade 250th indoors at a 60th.'"
Williamson's first photographic assignment came unexpectedly when he encountered a large fire on his way back to the office from the camera store. "I'll never forget the lab technician who told me after he processed the film that my proof sheet looked like a checkerboard!" he recalled. "But there was at least one good frame and it made the front page of the newspaper! And there it was; I had a huge front page photo from the very first roll of film I ever shot."
This early success motivated Williamson to rapidly develop his technical skills both behind the camera and in the darkroom. However, throughout his acclaimed career, storytelling remained the central pillar of his work, alongside his passionate commitment to social justice issues.
Williamson's dedication to documenting social inequality became a defining characteristic of his work and a value he passed on to his two daughters. In a 2014 interview with May-Ying Lam at The Washington Post, he explained his motivation: "I'm interested in how people pursue that American dream. [People who] did everything right, did everything they were told to do, hard working clean living, and yet they're not going to get a piece of the action beyond barely surviving."
Despite covering often difficult and heartbreaking subjects, Williamson maintained an unwavering love for his profession throughout his career. In his 2015 interview with Colton, he expressed genuine enthusiasm for his work: "Nobody loves it like me! I've never been bored and I love it! And I never forget how lucky I am."
Reflecting on his retirement, Williamson wrote on Facebook: "People sometimes say when they leave that they had the best job in the world. In my case it was true." His retirement marks the end of an era for photojournalism, as one of the field's most respected practitioners steps away from a career that has significantly impacted how Americans understand poverty, conflict, and social justice through the power of visual storytelling.
