Frank Fournier
In a diverse career covering the Lebanon civil war, to foreign trips with Pope JPII, numerous G8 summits, to the Wall Street crash of 1987 and to everything in between, Fournier was most at home covering the stories on the underprivileged or those essays centred on human values stressing an individual’s dignity. Not surprisingly, Frank was a leader in Contact’s global coverage of the evolving AIDS crisis in the US in the early 80s, especially how it impacted children and minorities.
In 1986 he received the World Press Photo Premier Award – its news photograph of the year – for his coverage and portrait of Omayra Sanchez, a 13-year-old victim of the Nevada del Ruiz volcano’s eruption in Columbia who was irretrievably trapped for days, ultimately dying from exposure; Fournier never left her side and documented efforts to rescue her until the moment she passed. A deeply humanistic photographer, he learned of the epidemic of infants infected with AIDS and abandoned in Romanian orphanages in 1990.
Fournier’s photographs won the first place in World Press Photo as well as in the National Press Photographers’ Pictures of the Year competition. Later he documented the systematic use of rape as a tool of war, photographing and interviewing rape victims in Sarajevo during the Bosnian civil war. When word came of an unfolding genocide in Rwanda, Frank spent weeks in the country covering that horrifying story and garnering a cover of TIME in the process. When the World Trade Center was felled on September 11, 2001, Frank was there.
He remains one of the early members of Contact Press Images and because of his longevity, background as humanist and his reputation as a strong street photographer, and Master photo printer he is a regular instructor at the International Center of Photography in New York City and a mentor for students of the South Bronx.
BOOKS & AWARDS:
- Red-Eye Published in January 2020
- Eleven: Witnessing The World Trade Center 1974-2002 Rizzoli Books
- Sarajevo: Portrait of the Siege with Mathew Nathans by Warner Communications
- Talking Pictures A collaboration with Isabelle Allende Chronicle Books
- World Press Photo 1st Place, News Features Category, Single Image, Romanian Infant Victim of AIDS. 1991
- The University of Missouri Award for Photo Work on AIDS done in Romania. 1991
- Maine Photographic Workshop Grant for Children and Families with AIDS. 1990
- National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Outstanding Achievement in Public Service Announcements for AIDS Awareness Program. 1989
- Fuji France Best Advertising Photograph of the Year. 1987
- World Press Photo 1st Place, News Feature Story. Wall Street Stock Market Crash. 1987
- World Press Photo Photo of the Year. Omayra Sanchez, Victim of the Nevado del Ruiz Volcano Eruption in Colombia. 1986