David Leeson

David Leeson was a judge in the 2021 v01 Contest

David Leeson has been a staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News since 1984. In 2004, he was a Pulitzer Prize Winner for his photographs depicting the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq. In 1985, Leeson was also a Pulitzer finalist for his photo coverage of apartheid in South Africa. In 1986, he lived on the streets of Dallas with the homeless for two months. The photos, published in a 24-page special section by The Dallas Morning News, won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Outstanding Coverage of the Problems of the Disadvantaged. In 1991, Leeson arrived in Kuwait City with the 1st Marine Division and was among the first journalists to photograph in the city following Iraq’s withdrawal during the Gulf War. The following year he returned to the gulf and gave readers an exclusive look inside war-torn Baghdad. In 1994, he covered civil war in Angola, earning a second Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. In the same year, a Leeson photograph of a family evacuating floodwaters in southeast Texas was named a finalist for the Pulitzer. For more than 14-months, 1996 thru 1997, he worked on an essay about death row in the United States. Following that assignment, Leeson completed stories in China, Bosnia, the 1999 earthquake in Turkey and civil war in Sudan.