Evelyn Hockstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist based in Washington, D.C., presented her work to journalism students and community members on Friday, Sept. 12 at the Sharp Museum on SIU’s campus as a part of the Women Photojournalists of Washington’s traveling exhibition. 

“This is the most unglamorous, glamorous job that you could have,” Hockstein, who is a photographer for Reuters, said. “It sounds amazing to go to the Oval Office and in some ways it is, but it is incredibly chaotic and I spend a lot of my time crawling on the floor.” 

WPOW is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization that educates the public about the role of women in visual journalism. The organization consists of 400 women, or those who identify as women photojournalists, photo editors, video journalists, multimedia producers and other industry professionals. 

This is the second year that SIU has been a stop on WPOW’s traveling exhibit, following last year when photojournalist Anna Rose Layden made a visit to Carbondale. 

Despite Hockstein’s current success, she didn’t always know that she wanted to be a photojournalist – or even work in politics. She was drawn to history and social justice. Photographs from times like the Civil Rights Movement, the Great Depression and the Vietnam War left indelible impressions, drawing her to journalism. 

“I didn’t really know how to become a photojournalist,” Hockstein said. “So I signed up to work at my college newspaper and really, my career took off from there.”

Before her senior year of college, she interned at the White House. After graduating, she went  on to her first job at the Bay City Times in Michigan. She didn’t want to go to another small-town newspaper, and had an idea in her head that she would leave America for Northern Ireland or Israel.

Talking with editors led her to choosing Israel because of the abundance of stories. Hockstein gathered her CDs and sold them for $5 each to buy a one-way ticket to Israel. 

Hockstein said she had never covered conflict before. She had worked at a couple of small papers but was struggling to find an internship. She knocked on Reuters’ door and the photo editor took her in as an intern. After going international, she decided to explore more of the world. 

“I had a colleague in Nairobi and he said, you know, come to Kenya. It’ll be a great place to be based. So I briefly went back to the U.S., I literally packed a bag, and I went for a month to check out Kenya, and I fell in love and I decided to move there, and I ended up staying in Kenya for seven years,” Hockstein said. 

She spent those seven years traveling all over the continent for coverage. Hockstein started freelancing for the New York Times and covered conflict in places such as Darfur, Sudan.

“It might seem like your work as a journalist… can feel fruitless or disheartening,” Hockstein said. “I believe that we just have to keep shining a light and there is power in that and that’s why I keep doing what I do.” 

Kenya changed after Mwai Kibaki won the election in 2007 and the country erupted into a violent political crisis. The citizens who favored the other candidate alleged that there was electoral manipulation. 

“I covered conflict in other countries, and Kenya was always the stable country and it was where I would come home to when I would go to Congo or go to Sudan or go to Ethiopia,” Hockstein said. “Now this was happening in Nairobi and all over. I remember going to a stadium and seeing, you know, displaced with people there and I had never seen that in Kenya.”

After her time in Kenya, she moved back to Washington, D.C., and worked as a freelance photographer, primarily for the Washington Post. Now, Hockstein works as a photojournalist for Reuters. Since returning from Kenya, she has covered events such as a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter and the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

Peggy Wilkens, a professor who retired from SIU, watched the presentation and walked through the exhibit with her husband afterward. 

“Think about who we just pulled in here,” Wilkens said. “She has a lot of credentials… She’s just outstanding to me. We’re lucky, very lucky.”

Hockstein’s coverage for Reuters on the Alamo Women’s Clinic after the fall of Roe v. Wade and the solar eclipse in 2024 has brought her to Carbondale several times throughout her career.

Julia Rendleman, a photojournalism professor at SIU who organized the event along with WPOW, first met Hockstein in 2019 while covering the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans being brought to the shores of Virginia.

“I feel inspired by Evelyn. I mean, every single image she showed today like, made my heart move,” Rendleman said.  

Evelyn Hockstein’s photos are on her website at https://evelyn-hockstein.squarespace.com/ 

Digital Editor Peyton Cook can be reached at [email protected]

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