News & Media

Photojournalist to Discuss Career Covering News in Over 90 Countries

Peter Turnley to Receive Ohio Wesleyan Honorary Degree During March 31 University Event 

DELAWARE, Ohio – From the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the Rwandan genocide, to “Ground Zero” on Sept. 11, 2001, photojournalist Peter Turnley has witnessed nearly all of the world’s major news stories of geo-political and historic significance over the past 30 years. 

Turnley’s career has taken him to more than 90 countries, and his award-winning photographs have been featured 43 times on the cover of Newsweek as well as in countless other leading publications around the world. 

On March 31, Turnley’s travels will bring him to Ohio Wesleyan University, where he will discuss “Moments of the Human Condition” at 7:30 p.m. in the Benes Rooms of OWU’s Hamilton-Williams Campus Center, 40 Rowland Ave., Delaware. Before his presentation, Turnley will receive an OWU honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, the university’s highest honor. 

“I have embraced photojournalism as a means to communicate, provoke, and inspire, as well as to document history,” Turnley has stated of his work. “I have employed the camera as a voice with which I can shout out about injustice while affirming what is beautiful and good. My body and soul have been exposed to many dimensions of the human condition, from its most glorious to its most wretched. 

“When I review my life as a photographer,” he adds, “I feel blessed and fortunate to have experienced so many wonderful emotions, the most significant being the sense of being alive, powerfully alive.” 

Other notable events covered by Turnley include conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Chechnya, Haiti, Israel-Palestine, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Kosovo; the liberation of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid in South Africa; the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in 2011. 

In addition, Turnley has met with and photographed world leaders including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Yasser Arafat. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris. Learn more about Turnley at www.peterturnley.com.

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Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private university offers 87 undergraduate majors and competes in 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Ohio Wesleyan combines a challenging, internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities to connect classroom theory with real-world experience. OWU’s 1,675 students represent 43 U.S. states and territories and 33 countries. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the latest President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included in the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review “best colleges” lists. Learn more at www.owu.edu.