Stephan Savoia

Stephan Savoia is an American photojournalist who has worked for several daily newspapers and the Associated Press during his 42-year career. He has been recognized twice by the Pulitzer Prize Board as a member of two winning Associated Press Feature Photography teams.^[1][2]

Stephan Savoia on assignment aboard the research vessel M/V OCEARCH tagging Great White Sharks off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Early life and education

Savoia was born in New York City and raised in its metropolitan area.^[3] He earned a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam, where he majored in sociology and social theory and minored in art and photography.^[4] He later completed a master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri, where he studied under photojournalist Angus McDougall.^[3] In 2005, Savoia was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by SUNY Potsdam in recognition of his contributions to visual journalism.^[4]

Career

Savoia began his photography career while working on The Racquette, the student newspaper at SUNY Potsdam.^[4] After completing his master's degree at the University of Missouri, he worked as a staff photojournalist for newspapers in Monroe and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.^[3] In November 1990, he joined the Associated Press. From 1990 to 2005, he served as a national staff photographer based in Boston, and continued with the AP as a staff photographer until his retirement in 2018.

The 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography recognized the AP "portfolio of images drawn from the 1992 presidential campaign".^[1] Savoia was the lead campaign photojournalist covering Bill Clinton’s presidential bid. The 1999 Prize recognized a collection of images from the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and ensuing impeachment hearings. Savoia photographed key figures, including Clinton’s personal secretary Betty Currie and her attorney Lawrence Wechsler.^[1][2]

Notable coverage

Savoia's major assignments with the Associated Press included:

• Coverage of U.S. presidential campaigns:
  • Lead AP photographer for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, part of the Pulitzer-winning AP team^[5]
  • Lead AP photographer for Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign^[6]
  • Coverage of Steve Forbes’s 1996 campaign^[7]
  • John McCain’s 2000^[8] and 2008 campaigns^[9]
  • Al Gore’s 2000 campaign^[10]

• 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona^[11]

• Major aviation disasters: Swissair Flight 111,^[12] EgyptAir Flight 990,^[13] and the plane crash of John F. Kennedy Jr.^[14]

• The 1999 creation of Nunavut and cultural documentation of Inuit communities in northern Canada^[4]

• International summits and protests: WTO protests in Seattle (1999),^[15] 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City,^[16] the G7 Summit,^[17] and APEC meetings^[18]

• McCain–Feingold campaign finance reform debates in the U.S. Senate^[19]

• Major U.S. sports: Super Bowl,^[20] NCAA basketball tournaments,^[21] and Major League Baseball^[22]

• A widely circulated image of Michael Jordan crying at the 2009 Basketball Hall of Fame induction, which later became the viral "Crying Jordan" meme^[23]

• Among the first AP photojournalists to use the Kodak NC2000 digital camera, Savoia transmitted one of the first globally published digital news images from the 1994 Woodstock music festival^[24]

Publications and exhibitions

Savoia’s work has appeared in:

• The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment^[25]
• Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace and Everything Else^[26]
• Flash! The Associated Press Covers the World^[27]
• Glasgow: Story of a Missouri Rivertown^[28]

Teaching and professional involvement

Savoia has lectured and presented on photojournalism at various universities and professional workshops. He served as a judge for the Pictures of the Year International (POYi),^[3] the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism competition,^[29] and the Boston Press Photographers Association’s college contests.^[30] He also served as President of the Boston Press Photographers Association from 2016 to 2020.^[31]

In 2025, Savoia became the president of the f4 & See It Foundation, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting impactful photojournalism and documentary photography.^[32] The organization promotes the thoughtful and purposeful telling of visual stories, drawing on Savoia’s own philosophy of photojournalism. The foundation’s name, coined by Savoia, is a play on the phrase "f/8 and be there", reimagined as "f4 and See It" to reflect a more deliberate and emotionally aware approach to visual storytelling.