Team Eppridge

Bill Eppridge runs alongside Robert Kennedy's campaign in 1968.Photo by Burton Berinsky

Bill Eppridge

Bill Eppridge graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1960. He was twice named college photographer of a year and in 1959 was awarded initial esteem in a National Press Photographers Association competition. His next stop was an internship at LIFE magazine, where he eventually became a staffer and later joined the staff of Sports Illustrated in 1972. His collective assignments read like a list of the most important historical and cultural events of the latter half of the 20^th Century, including his iconic photograph of Bobby Kennedy after the Presidential candidate was shot. He photographed MPW.16 and he served as a faculty member at MPW 21, 26 and 28-45.

Faculty Mentors

Becky Lebowitz Hanger

Becky Lebowitz Hanger is the operations manager and photographers' chief at The New York Times. Her work has been honored at Pictures of the Year International, and she was photo editor for Josh Haner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning project after the Boston Marathon bombing. She’s been involved in the online visual innovations for which the NYT is famous since joining the staff in 2004.

Becky earned her master's degree from the University of Missouri after conducting her masters project at the Hartford Courant, where she researched and watched how photo editors work. She later worked as a photo editor at The Palm Beach Post under the guidance of the late, great photo editor Mark Edelson.

This is Becky’s fourth MPW as faculty. However, she did crew MPW.50 in Boonville in 1998. Her job that year was scanning negatives.

Randy Olson

Randy Olson is a photographer in the documentary tradition. Randy’s 30+ National Geographic projects have taken him to almost every continent. National Geographic Society published a book of his work in 2011 in their Masters of Photography series. Olson was the Magazine Photographer of the Year in the 2003 Pictures of the Year International (POYi) competition, and was also awarded POYi’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 1991 — one of only two photographers to win in both media in the largest photojournalism contest operating continuously since World War II.

In 2011, Randy founded The Photo Society. The purpose of the organization is to find economic opportunities and provide exposure to members as the economics of print dwindles. While working as a newspaper photographer at The Pittsburgh Press, Olson received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1995 to support a seven-year project documenting a family with AIDS, and a first-place Robert F. Kennedy Award for his story on problems with Section 8 housing in 1991. He was also awarded the Nikon Sabbatical grant and a grant from the National Archives to save the Pictures of the Year collection.

Photographers