Pulitzer-award-winning photojournalist Jerry Gay’s passion for photography and firefighters started so early that, as far back as elementary school, he would jump on his bike with a Kodak Pony 4 to chase fire engines. Gay, a longtime photojournalist who won a 1975 Pulitzer for a black-and-white film photograph of exhausted firefighters, died on October 14 at the age of 79.
The photographer's passion for photographing firefighters likely stems from his grandfather, who was a firefighter. The passion that had him biking after fire trucks in elementary school turned into a career as a photojournalist who kept a police and fire call scanner under his bed and in his car.
Gay was working for the Seattle Times when he arrived on the scene of a house fire in 1974. But, when he arrived, he was too late to capture photos of the flames, as the fire had already largely been put out. Instead, Gay turned his lens to four firefighters resting against a muddy bank, exhaustion from the call written in their expressions.
“I took six or eight frames, all at once,” Gay said. “They all had a deep, reflective look. I could tell they were rethinking what they’d just been through.”
The photograph, which he titled A Lull in the Battle, was taken on a Nikon F and went on to earn a Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography in 1975.
The photographer was known for both his work with black-and-white film and connecting with people. As fellow Seattle-area photographer Dan Lamont said, “You wouldn’t expect to see a lot of landscapes from Jerry Gay. It was all about people.”
Two years after winning the Pulitzer, Gay photographed convicted serial killer Ted Bundy at the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He was one of the few photographers allowed to photograph him after his arrest.
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“There wasn’t any judgment,” Gay later said in an interview in 2018. “I was just photographing a person named Ted. I was getting to know him, so he would feel comfortable with the camera. I wanted to know him for who he was, and not for what had happened.”
In addition to taking many historic photographs, Gay also served as the president of the National Press Photographers Association.
In a tribute from Robinson newspapers, where he worked later in his career, his colleagues wrote that “Jerry taught us that a camera isn’t a tool for taking something from a subject – it is a bridge for sharing understanding, dignity, and warmth.”
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