Michel du Cille, Post photojournalist who won Pulitzer three times, dies at 58

By Matt Schudel December 11

Michel du Cille, a Washington Post photojournalist who was a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his dramatic images of human struggle and triumph, and who recently chronicled the plight of Ebola patients and the people who cared for them, died Thursday while on assignment for The Post in Liberia. He was 58.

He collapsed while returning on foot from a village in the Salala district of Liberias Bong County, where he had been working on a project. He was transported over dirt roads to a hospital two hours away but was declared dead on arrival of an apparent heart attack.

Mr. du Cille won two Pulitzer Prizes for photography with the Miami Herald in the 1980s and joined The Post in 1988. In 2008, he shared his third Pulitzer, with Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull, for an investigative series on the treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Michel had returned to Liberia on Tuesday after a four-week break that included showing his photographs at the Addis Foto Fest in Ethiopia, Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said in a statement to the newspapers staff.

We are all heartbroken, he continued. We have lost a beloved colleague and one of the worlds most accomplished photographers.

Michel du Cille was asked to make some remarks about his experiences covering Ebola in Liberia to share with his colleagues. This was filmed in Ethiopia while Michel was at a photo conference. He passed away in Liberia on Thursday, Dec. 11. (The Washington Post)

Mr. du Cille served as The Posts director of photography and as an assistant managing editor for several years before returning to the field as a full-time shooter, the job in which he always felt most comfortable. He was renowned among journalists for his ability to look inside a crisis and find enduring portraits of sorrow, dignity and perseverance.

His assignments often took him to places of strife and deprivation, from Sudan to Afghanistan, where he came under fire in 2013. He covered civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s before returning to west Africa this year to cover the Ebola outbreak.

In Liberia, Mr. du Cille wore full-body protective gear and operated his cameras through heavy rubber gloves. He photographed the stricken patients, but he also managed to convey the emotional toll of the disease on victims families.

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Michel du Cille, Post photojournalist who won Pulitzer three times, dies at 58