A couple is photographed moments after learning that their 19-month-old child had been swept out to sea at Hermosa Beach. That morning, Times photographer Jack Gaunt was at his beachfront home when he heard a neighbor shout, “Something’s happening on the beach!” Gaunt grabbed his Rolleiflex camera and headed toward the shoreline. His photograph appeared on the front page of The Times the next day. The image won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for press photography; the Pulitzer committee called the photo “poignant and profoundly moving.” But for Gaunt, the image was hard to bear at first, his daughter recalled in Gaunt’s 2007 Times obituary.
View 130 photos for The Times’ 130th birthday on Framework.
Photo credit: Jack Gaunt / Los Angeles Time
(Source: Los Angeles Times, via mutations)
