Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Brian Lanker, a newspaper and Life magazine, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated photographer whose book “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America” was one of the most successful photography books ever, has died at his home in Eugene after battling pancreatic cancer for less than two weeks. He was 64.
In 2011 Brian Lanker suddenly and swiftly died of cancer. At his memorial service, a coterie of photographers focused on the need for a book not only on Brian’s excellent photographs but one that celebrated the remarkable, engaging nature of the man.
It’s hard to say for which image Brian Lanker may have been most renowned. Was it the Pulitzer-winning photo of an ebullient Lynda Coburn with her couldn’t-be-more-newly born upon her belly? Or was it the elegant portrait of Septima Poinsette Clark, looking every bit the “queen mother” of the civil rights movement, that graced the cover of his book, “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America”?
