Carol Guzy is one of only four people who have won four Pulitzer Prizes. As a young girl, she always wanted to be an artist. But as she was coming of age in a working-class family in Bethlehem, Pa., such an ambition seemed impossible. Encouraged to “do something practical,” she went to nursing school and soon realized she could not be a nurse. After a friend gave her a camera and she took a photography course, her fascination with photography led to an internship and then a job at the Miami Herald. In 1988 she moved to The Washington Post. In 1990, Guzy was the first woman to receive the Newspaper Photographer of the Year Award, presented by the National Press Photographers Association. Guzy credits the nursing program with giving her an understanding of and sensitivity to human suffering and believes that her photographs would be different without that background.

Guzy spent months on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and not only documented its impact on the animals of the region, but rescued two dogs by bringing them home with her.

She has received numerous awards for her work. She has been honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for her coverage of the military intervention in Haiti and the devastating mudslide in Armero, Colombia. She has received a third Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for her work in Kosovo and her fourth Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for coverage of the Haitian earthquake in 2010.