Award-winning journalists to lead Snedden lecture

April 12, 2019

Jeff Richardson

Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer Rodrigo Abd and University of Alaska Fairbanks Snedden Chair Alberto Arce will discuss their work together at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16, in a free lecture at UAF's Murie Building auditorium.

The Snedden Chair lecture series is sponsored by the UAF Department of Communications and Journalism. It is funded with an endowment provided by the late Helen Snedden, wife of longtime Fairbanks Daily News-Miner publisher C.W. Snedden.

Arce and Abd worked together for six years when they both covered Central and South America for the Associated Press. They have also both separately covered political and military conflicts in the Middle East.

Their lecture will focus on two stories of human survival: Guatemalans who regularly pick through mountains of trash for bits of metal they can sell, and Venezuelan fishermen who arm themselves to fend off pirates.

Abd is a staff photographer for the AP. He shared the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography with four other AP photographers for their work covering the Syrian civil war.

Arce has covered Honduras and Central America for the AP, and he also worked in the AP's Mexico City bureau and for The New York Times as a senior staff editor. He was also a 2018 Knight Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan.