In our latest video interview for the archives, Robert Pledge – a photo editor, OPC member and awards judge – talks about his career, including his early work as a student of West African languages and anthropology and his entry into journalism through his deep interest in African affairs.
During the interview, he talks about shifts in image technology over the decades and how those developments have changed journalism and the world. He also recalls working in Paris in the late 1960s during a time of social activism and idealism that influenced the rest of his career.
Pledge worked as an editor for Zoom magazine, and later became director of the Gamma photo agency in New York.
He founded Contact Press Images in New York in 1976 along with photographer David Burnett.
He has edited two books that garnered the OPC’s Olivier Rebbot Award. Red-Color News Soldier, by Li Zhensheng, won the award in 2004, and 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World, written with Jacques Menasche, won the award in 2010.