Today we are very pleased to welcome Peter Turnley to NCN with a photographer’s showcase.  Peter is truly among our very finest photojournalists and not just because he is a maestro with the camera, but because he operates it with a profound social conscience.  His work as an unembedded photographer during the first Persian Gulf War (aka “Desert Storm”) was central in breaking through efforts to manage and control western perceptions of what was going on.  But no less important was his very earliest work (with his brother David) on race in America (1976) or later efforts from Tiananmen Square (1989) or his work for outlets such as Newsweek, Stern, Life, Paris Match and the list goes on, covering world conflicts everywhere from the Balkans, Somalia, and Rwanda to the Israeli-Palestine controversy.   No less important has been his coverage of the U.S. homefront in the wake of war and conflict.

In this Photographer’s Showcase Peter Turnley features photographs that he took at the recent Inauguration of President Obama. One might wonder why we return to this moment of public elation so quickly, as recent wrangling over the economic stimulus package has served as a sober reminder of the hard core reality of the political world that we live in. We do it mostly because Peter’s photographs are a sensitive and powerful reminder that even in such a political world, “everything is possible.”

Click on an individual photo in the gallery below to see a slightly larger version of the image and Peter’s caption.  Click on the slightly larger photoraph a second time to see a large version of the image.